GERMAN ENGRAVING: FROM THE BEGINNINGS TO MARTIN SCHONGAUER
WHERE were the beginnings? When were the
beginnings? Germany, the Netherlands,
and Italy have each claimed priority. Max Lehrs
has settled these rival claims, so far as they can be
settled at the present time, by locating the cradle
of engraving neither in Germany, in the Netherlands,
nor in Italy, but in a neutral country—Switzerland,
in the vicinity of Basle—naming the
Master of the Playing Cards as probably the
earliest engraver whose works have come down to
us. Undoubtedly this artist was not the first to
engrave upon metal plates, but of his predecessors
nothing is known, nor has any example of their
work survived.
The technical method of the Master of the Playing
Cards is that of a painter rather than of a goldsmith.
There is practically no cross-hatching, and
the effect is produced by a series of delicate lines,
mostly vertical, laid close together. His plates are
unsigned and undated, so that we can only approximate
the period of his activity. That he preceded,
by at least ten years, the earliest dated engraving,
the Flagellation, by the Master of 1446, may safely
be assumed, since in the manuscript copy of Conrad
von Würzburg’s “The Trojan War,” transcribed in
1441 by Heinrich von Steinfurt (an ecclesiastic of
Osnabrück), there are pen drawings of figures wearing
costumes which correspond exactly with those
in prints by the Master of the Playing Cards in his
middle period. The Master of the Playing Cards is,
therefore, the first bright morning star of engraving.
From him there flows a stream of influence
affecting substantially all of the German masters
until the time of Martin Schongauer, some of whose
earlier plates show unmistakable traces of an acquaintanceship
with his work.
MASTER OF THE PLAYING CARDS. ST. GEORGE
Size of the original engraving, 5⅞ × 5¼ inches
In the Royal Print Room, Dresden
MASTER OF THE PLAYING CARDS. MAN OF SORROWS
Size of the original engraving, 7¾ × 5⅛ inches
In the British Museum
St. George and the Dragon is in his early manner.
Here are plainly to be seen the characteristics of
this first period—the broken, stratified rocks, the
isolated and conventionalized plants, and the peculiar
drawing of the horse, especially its slanting
and half-human eyes. The Playing Cards, from
which he takes his name, may safely be assigned to
his middle period. The suits are made up of Flowers
(roses and cyclamen), Wild Men, Birds, and Deer,
with a fifth, or alternative suit of Lions and Bears.
Like all the early German designers of playing
cards, he has given free rein to his fancy and inventiveness.
The position of the different emblems is
varied for each numeral card; and each flower, wild
man, bird, or beast, has an attitude and character
of its own, no two being identical. No engraver
has surpassed him in truthfulness and subtlety of
observation and in the delineation of birds few
artists have equalled him. His rendering of the
growth and form of flowers would have delighted
John Ruskin. In the King of Cyclamen and the
Queen of Cyclamen the faces have an almost portrait-like
individuality. The hands are well drawn
and do not yet display that attenuation which is
characteristic of nearly all fifteenth century German
masters and is a noticeable feature in engravings
by Martin Schongauer himself. The clothing
falls in natural folds, and in the King of Cyclamen
the representation of fur could hardly be bettered.
To his latest and most mature period must be
assigned the Man of Sorrows—in some ways his
finest, and certainly his most moving, plate. Not
only has he differentiated between the textures of
the linen loin-cloth and the coarser material of the
cloak; but the column, the cross with its beautiful
and truthful indication of the grain of the wood,
and the ground itself, all are treated with a knowledge
and a sensitiveness that is surprising. The
engraver’s greatest triumph, however, is in the
figure of Christ. There is a feeling for form and
structure, sadly lacking in the work of his successors,
and his suggestion of the strained and
pulsing veins, which throb through the Redeemer’s
tortured limbs, is of a compelling truth.
Chief among the engravers who show most clearly
the influence of the Master of the Playing Cards is
the Master of the Year 1446, so named from the
date which appears in the Flagellation. His prints
present a more or less primitive appearance, and
were it not for this date, one might be tempted, on
internal evidence, to assign them to an earlier
period. In the Passion series, in particular, many
of the figures are more gnome-like than human.
Such creatures as the man blowing a horn, in Christ
Nailed to the Cross, and the man pulling upon a
rope, in the same print, recall to our minds, by an
association of ideas, the old German fairy tales.
Contemporary with the Master of 1446, and belonging
to the Burgundian-Netherlands group, to
which also belong the two anonymous engravers
known as the Master of the Mount of Calvary
and the Master of the Death of Mary, is the
Master of the Gardens of Love. His figures are
crude in drawing and stiff in their movements. His
knowledge of tree forms is rudimentary; but his
animals and birds show real observation and seem
to have been studied from life.
MASTER OF THE YEAR 1446. CHRIST NAILED TO THE CROSS
Size of the original engraving, 4⅛ × 3¼ inches
In the Royal Print Room, Berlin
MASTER OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST. ST. JOHN THE
BAPTIST
Size of the original engraving, 8½ × 5⅞ inches
In the Albertina, Vienna
In the larger of the two engravings from which
he takes his name, we see reflected the pleasure-loving
court of the Dukes of Burgundy. On
the right, a lady leads her lover to a table spread
with tempting viands. She stretches forth her right
hand to take the fruit. It is a fig, the sign of fertility.
To their right, drinking from a stream, is a
unicorn, the sign of chastity. The artist seemingly
wishes the lady’s message to read that she is still
unwedded, and that, were she wedded, she would
be a good mother. Observe, likewise, the way in
which the engraver has placed the wild hogs, deer,
and bears emerging from the woods, while, in the
sky, numerous birds wing their flight. In the immediate
foreground a lady and a cavalier are reading
poetry to each other. Another lady plays to a
gallant who, in a most uncomfortable attitude,
holds a sheet of music. In the right-hand corner is
a fourth pair, the lady busily twining a wreath for
her lover’s hat, which lies on her lap. We have here
a compendium of the courtly life of the time, which
is about 1448.
The Master of St. John the Baptist may fittingly
be called the first realist in engraving. His
plates do not display that extraordinary delicacy
in cutting which is characteristic of the Master of
the Playing Cards. Like that earlier engraver, he
makes little use of cross-hatching, and his strokes
are freely disposed—more in the manner of a painter
than a goldsmith-engraver. His birds and flowers
are closely observed and admirably rendered.
The mullein, the columbine, and the iris in St.
John the Baptist are each given their individual
character; the tree trunks to the right no longer
resemble twisted columns, as in earlier work, but
have real bark with knot holes and branches organically
joined, though the foliage is still conventionally
treated. One cannot but remark, also, the
skilful way in which the engraver has differentiated
between the furry undergarment and the cloak
which St. John the Baptist wears.
In St. Christopher we have probably one of his
latest works. His representation of the waves, of
the sky and clouds, is noteworthy, while, on the
beach, the sea-shells give mute testimony to his
love for little things.
Of the predecessors of Martin Schongauer, none
exerted a greater influence than the Master E. S.
of 1466. On the technical side he was the actual
creator of engraving as practised in modern times,
and was a determining factor in the progress of
the art. Even the Italian engravers were unable to
withstand it; their Prophets and Sibyls are partly
derived from his Evangelists and Apostles, the easy
disposition of his draperies furnishing them with
models. Over three hundred engravings by the
Master E. S. have come down to us, and over a
hundred more can be traced through copies by
other hands, or as having formed component parts
of his two sets of playing cards—the smaller set
made up of Wild Animals, Helmets, Escutcheons,
and Flowers, while the larger set comprises Men,
Dogs, Birds, and Escutcheons.
MASTER E. S. OF 1466. MADONNA AND CHILD WITH SAINTS
MARGUERITE AND CATHERINE
Size of the original engraving, 8⅝ × 6⅜ inches
In the Royal Print Room, Dresden
MASTER E. S. OF 1466. ECSTASY OF ST. MARY
MAGDALEN
Size of the original engraving, 6½ × 5 inches
In the Royal Print Room, Dresden
His work shows unmistakably the influence of
the Master of the Playing Cards, and we may
safely place him in the region of the upper Rhine,
probably in the vicinity of Freiburg or Breisach.
In the Madonna and Child with Saints Marguerite
and Catherine his peculiar qualities and limitations
may clearly be seen. The plants and flowers, with
which the ground is thickly carpeted, are engraved
in firm, clear-cut lines, betokening the trained hand
of the goldsmith. The figures and drapery are rendered
with delicate single strokes; but in the shaded
portions of the wall, back of the Madonna, cross-hatching
is skilfully employed. As is the case in
nearly all the works of the early German engravers,
the laws of perspective are imperfectly understood,
but none the less the composition has a charm all
its own.
The Ecstasy of St. Mary Magdalen is of interest,
not only technically and artistically, but because of
its influence upon the Master of the Amsterdam
Cabinet, who has twice treated the subject, and
upon Albrecht Dürer, by whom we have a woodcut
seemingly copied from this engraving. Martin
Schongauer, likewise, may have profited by the
feathered forms of the angels which reappear, somewhat
modified, in his engraving of the Nativity.
The birds and the isolated plants in the foreground
still show the influence of the Master of the Playing
Cards.
St. Matthew (whom we shall meet again in our
consideration of Florentine engraving, transformed
into the Tiburtine Sibyl, engraved in the Fine Manner
of the Finiguerra School) and St. Paul (who
likewise reappears as Amos in the series of Prophets
and Sibyls) show an increasing command of technical
resources. The draperies are beautifully disposed;
and, in St. Paul, the system of cross-hatching
upon the back of the chair, in the shaded portions
beneath, and upon the mantle of the saint, is
fully developed.
The Madonna of Einsiedeln, dated 1466, is
usually accounted the engraver’s masterpiece.
Beautiful though it is in composition and in execution,
it suggests a translation, into black and white,
of a painting, and on technical grounds, as well as
for the beauty of its component parts, one may
prefer the Design for a Paten, dating from the same
year [1466]. Here the central scene, representing
St. John the Baptist, owes not a little, both in composition
and in technique, to the Master of St. John
the Baptist. The four Evangelists, arranged in
alternation with their appropriate symbols, around
the central picture, are little masterpieces of characterization
and of engraving, and there can be
nothing but unmixed admiration for the way in
which plant and bird forms are woven into a perfectly
harmonious pattern.
MASTER E. S. OF 1466. DESIGN FOR A PATEN
Size of the original engraving, 7⅛ inches in diameter
In the Royal Print Room, Berlin
MASTER E. S. OF 1466. ST. JOHN ON THE ISLAND OF PATMOS
Size of the original engraving, 8⅛ × 5½ inches
In the Hofbibliotek, Vienna
St. John on the Island of Patmos likewise shows
unmistakably the influence of the Master of St.
John the Baptist and is doubly interesting inasmuch
as, in its turn, it had a shaping influence
upon the engraving of the same subject by Martin
Schongauer. It is dated 1467, the latest date found
upon any plate by the Master E. S., and it is assumed
that in this year his activity came to an end.
Martin Schongauer, who was born in Colmar
about 1445 and is known to have died in 1491, is
not only the most eminent painter and engraver
in the latter third of the fifteenth century, he is
one of the very greatest masters of the graphic arts.
His plates number one hundred and fifteen, and,
as in the case of Albrecht Dürer, it is upon his engraved
work, rather than upon his all too few
paintings, that his immortality must rest.
Schongauer’s prints can be arranged in something
approximating chronological order. In the earliest
twelve engravings the shanks of the letter M, in
his monogram, are drawn vertically, whereas in all
his later prints they slant outward. This apparently
minor point is really of great significance in a study
of his development, since it enables us to place
correctly certain plates which, until recently, were
assigned to his latest period, such as the Death of
the Virgin, the Adoration of the Magi, and the
Flight Into Egypt.
One of the richest toned plates in this first group
is the Virgin with a Parrot, an engraving which,
incidentally, exists in two states. In the second
state, the cushion upon which the Christ Child is
seated, instead of being plain, has an elaborate
pattern upon the upper side, and the flowing tresses
of the Virgin are extended more to the left, thereby
greatly improving the composition as a whole.
For Martin Schongauer, as for nearly all the
earlier German masters, the grotesque had a
strange fascination. His power of welding together
parts of various animals into living fantastic
creatures is nowhere better seen than in the
Temptation of St. Anthony. Vasari tells how the
young Michelangelo, meeting with an impression
of this engraving in Florence, was impelled to copy
it with a pen “in such a manner as had never before
been seen. He painted it in colors also, and the
better to imitate the strange forms among these
devils, he bought fish which had scales somewhat
resembling those of the demon. In this pen copy
also he displayed so much ability that his credit
and reputation were greatly enhanced thereby.”
It would appear to be one of Schongauer’s early
plates, not only from the form of the monogram,
but also from the treatment of the upper portion of
the sky, shaded with many horizontal graver strokes,
growing stronger as the upper edge of the plate is
reached—a treatment which does not occur in any
other print by him.
MARTIN SCHONGAUER. VIRGIN WITH A PARROT
Size of the original engraving, 6¼ × 4¼ inches
In the Public Art Collections, Basle
MARTIN SCHONGAUER. TEMPTATION OF ST. ANTHONY
Size of the original engraving, 12⅜ × 9⅛ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
MARTIN SCHONGAUER. DEATH OF THE VIRGIN
Size of the original engraving, 10⅛ × 6⅝ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
MARTIN SCHONGAUER. PILATE WASHING HIS HANDS
Size of the original engraving, 6⅜ × 4½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Among the myriad renderings of the Death of
the Virgin, by painters and engravers, it is doubtful
if any version is superior, so far as dramatic intensity
is concerned, to Schongauer’s. As a composition,
Dürer’s woodcut from the Life of the Virgin,
is simpler and more “telling,” in that certain non-essentials
have been eliminated; but could we well
spare so beautiful a design as that of the candelabrum
which, in Schongauer’s engraving, stands at
the foot of the bed?
From the twelve plates of the Passion, each of
which repays study, it is not easy to select one for
reproduction. The Crucifixion, a subject which
Schongauer engraved no less than six times, has a
poignant charm; and for sheer beauty the Resurrection
is among the most significant of the series.
Pilate Washing His Hands has, however, a double
interest. The faces of Christ’s tormentors and of
the figures standing beside and to the left of
Pilate’s throne, are strongly characterized, portrait-like
heads, in marked contrast with the gentleness
of Christ, and the weak and vacillating
Pilate. The enthroned Pilate later reappears as
the Prophet Daniel in the series of Prophets and
Sibyls, Florentine engravings in the Fine Manner.
We have already referred to St. John on the
Island of Patmos by the Master E. S. A more
significant contrast between the work of the earlier
engraver and that of Schongauer could hardly be
found. The Master E. S. gives a multiplicity of
objects, animate and inanimate, charming and
interesting in themselves, but distracting from the
main purpose of the composition—witness the St.
Christopher crossing the river in the middle distance,
the lion and the terrified horse in the wood
to the right, the swan in the stream to the left,
and the life-like birds perched upon the castle-crowned
cliff. Schongauer eliminates all these
accessories. One vessel and two small boats alone
break the calm expanse of the unruffled sea. Save
for the two plants in the foreground (which betray
the influence of the Master of the Playing Cards)
the ground is simply treated and offers little to
distract our attention from the seated figure of St.
John, who faces to the left and gazes upwards at
the Madonna and Child in glory. The eagle bears
a strong family likeness to the same bird in the
Design for a Paten by the Master E. S. Schongauer
has here drawn a tree, not bare, as is his wont,
but adorned with foliage beautifully disposed and
artistically treated, in marked contrast to the conventional
and decorative manner of the Master
E. S. and his predecessors.
MARTIN SCHONGAUER. ST. JOHN ON THE ISLAND OF PATMOS
Size of the original engraving, 6½ × 4⅝ inches
In the Kunsthalle, Hamburg
MARTIN SCHONGAUER. CHRIST APPEARING TO THE
MAGDALEN
Size of the original engraving, 6¼ × 6⅛ inches
In the Kunsthalle, Hamburg
MARTIN SCHONGAUER. VIRGIN SEATED IN A
COURTYARD
Size of the original engraving, 6¾ × 4⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
MARTIN SCHONGAUER. ANGEL OF THE ANNUNCIATION
Size of the original engraving, 6⅝ × 4½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The type of the Redeemer, which Schongauer
has made so peculiarly his own, is nowhere seen to
better advantage than in the two beautiful plates
of the Baptism of Christ and Christ Appearing to
the Magdalen. Max Geisberg acclaims the last-named
as Schongauer’s most beautiful engraving.
“Here, the contents of the composition have received
an embodiment, the fervor, depth, and delicacy
of which have never been surpassed in art.”[1]
It can, however, share this high praise with the
Virgin Seated in a Courtyard and the Angel of the Annunciation.
For sheer beauty, these plates remain
to this day not only unsurpassed, but unequalled.
What quietude and restraint there is in the
Virgin Seated in a Courtyard, the wall back of her
discreetly bare, the grass indicated by a few small
but significant strokes, while the branches of one
little, leafless tree form an exquisite pattern against
the untouched sky! By contrast one of Dürer’s
technical masterpieces—the Virgin Seated by a City
Wall—seems overworked and overloaded with
needless accessories.
The Angel of the Annunciation marks the culmination
of Schongauer’s art and belongs to his
most mature period. Everything not absolutely
necessary for a clear presentation has been eliminated.
A slight shadow upon the ground gives
solidity to the figure. All else is blank. The art of
simplification can hardly go further, and were one
to be restricted to the choice of a single print by
any of Dürer’s predecessors, one might wisely
select the Angel of the Annunciation.
That Schongauer was equally interested in things
mundane is convincingly proved by Peasants Going
to Market, Goldsmith’s Apprentices Fighting, or The
Miller. How well he has differentiated between the
mother-ass, filled with maternal solicitude, and the
woolly, stocky, and somewhat foolish little donkey
which follows, while the miller with upraised staff
urges her onward.
The Crozier and the Censer furnish unmistakable
proof, were such needed, that as a goldsmith-designer,
no less than as an engraver, Schongauer
is entitled to the loftiest place in German art.
They are masterpieces, alike in invention and in
execution. His influence was not confined to his
contemporaries, but can be traced in many ways,
and in many media, long after his death. His
School, however, produced no engraver worthy,
for a moment, of comparison with him.
MARTIN SCHONGAUER. THE MILLER
Size of the original engraving, 3½ × 4⅞ inches
In the Albertina, Vienna
MARTIN SCHONGAUER. CENSER
Size of the original engraving, 11½ × 8¼ inches
The Master L Cz alone seems to have caught
something of Schongauer’s spirit while, at the same
time, preserving his own individuality. The face of
the Redeemer in Christ Entering Jerusalem is reminiscent
of the earlier engraver; and, among the
Apostles to the left, two, at least, are taken, with
slight modifications, from Schongauer’s Death of the
Virgin.
Christ Tempted has a singular charm. The figure
of Satan, realistically treated, is an interesting
example of that passion for the grotesque from
which even the greatest artists in the North seemed
unable to shake themselves wholly free. The wood
in the middle distance, to the left of Christ, evinces
a close study of natural forms, while the landscape
takes its place admirably in the composition. The
excessive rarity of engravings by L Cz alone has
prevented them from being appreciated at their
true worth. They are original in composition, full
of fantasy and charm. Even so universal an artist
as Albrecht Dürer did not disdain to borrow, from
Christ Tempted, the motive of the mountain goat
gazing downward, which reappears, slightly modified,
in Adam and Eve, his masterpiece of the
year 1504.
ENGRAVERS AND ETCHERS
GERMAN ENGRAVING: FROM THE BEGINNINGS
TO MARTIN SCHONGAUER
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Der Meister 
; ein Kupferstecher der Zeit Karls des Kühnen.
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Stoss, Veit (c. 1450-c. 1533)
Veit Stoss; Nachbildungen seiner Kupferstiche. Edited by Engelbert
Baumeister. 13 reproductions. Berlin: Bruno Cassirer. 1913. (Graphische
Gesellschaft. Publication 17.)
Olmütz, Wenzel von (flourished 1480-1500)
Wenzel von Olmütz. By Max Lehrs. 22 reproductions on 11 plates.
Dresden: W. Hoffmann. 1889 (In German.)
MASTER L Cz. CHRIST TEMPTED
Size of the original engraving 8¾ × 6⅝ inches
MASTER L Cz. CHRIST ENTERING JERUSALEM
Size of the original engraving, 8⅞ × 7 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
ITALIAN ENGRAVING: THE FLORENTINES
ENGRAVING in Italy differs, in many essentials,
from the art as practised in Germany.
Germany may claim priority in point of time, but
it is doubtful whether the Florentines—for in
Florence, and among the goldsmiths, the art took
its rise in Italy—in the beginning were influenced
by, or even acquainted with, the work of their
northern contemporaries. In Germany the designer
and the engraver were one, and some of the greatest
masters embodied their finest conceptions in their
prints. We may truly say that the world-wide
reputation which Dürer and Schongauer have enjoyed
for four centuries and more, rests almost
entirely upon their engraved, rather than upon
their painted, work.
In Italy it was otherwise. There, with a few signal
exceptions, engraving was used merely as a convenient
method of multiplying an existing design.
It may be that we owe to this fact both the color of
the ink used in these early Florentine prints, and the
method of taking impressions. This would seem, in
many cases, to be by rubbing rather than by the
use of the roller press, which appears to have been
known and used in the North substantially from
the very beginning. The Florentine, aiming to
duplicate a drawing in silver-point or wash, would
naturally endeavor to approximate the color of his
original. Consequently we do not find the lustrous
black impressions, strongly printed, which
are the prize of the collector of early German engravings.
Vasari’s story of the invention of engraving by
Maso Finiguerra (1426-1464) was long ago disproved,
and for a time it seemed as though Finiguerra
and his work were likely to be consigned to
that limbo of the legendary from which Baldini—at
one time accredited with many prints—is only just
now emerging. Yet Finiguerra, although not the
“inventor” of the art, is, beyond peradventure, the
most important influence in early Italian engraving,
not only on account of his own work on copper,
but still more through the Picture-Chronicle, which
served as an inspiration to the artists working in
his School and continuing his tradition after his
death. So that Vasari’s tale, though not accurate
in the matter of fact, was veracious in the larger
sense.
ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. PROFILE
PORTRAIT OF A LADY
Size of the original engraving, 8⅞ × 5⅝ inches
In the Royal Print Room, Berlin
ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. WILD ANIMALS HUNTING
AND FIGHTING
Size of the original engraving, 10⅛ × 14¾ inches
In the British Museum
The Picture-Chronicle is a book of drawings
illustrating the History of the World, and evidently
proceeds from the hand and workshop of a Florentine
goldsmith-engraver of about 1460. It was
acquired by the British Museum from Mr. Ruskin
in 1888. The drawings are in pen and ink and wash,
often reinforced with open pen-shading like that
imitated later by the Broad Manner engravers.
At its best the work has the true early Renaissance
combination of archaic strength with attractive
naiveté—the ornamental detail carried out with a
masterly power of pen, and with the patient delight
of one who is by instinct and training above all
things a jeweler.
Finiguerra’s fame as the leading worker in niello
was firmly established by 1450; and although we
cannot assign certainly any engraving by him to a
date earlier than 1460, there is a group of Florentine
primitives which may be placed between the years
1450 and 1460, thus antedating Finiguerra’s first
plate by about ten years. The most beautiful of
these early prints in conception, and the purest in
execution, is the Profile Portrait of a Lady, a single
impression of which has come down to us and is
now in Berlin. In style it recalls the paintings of
Piero della Francesca, Verrocchio, Uccello, or Pollaiuolo,
and although it would be unwise to attribute
it to any known master, there is a sensitive
quality in the drawing, and a restraint, which differentiates
it from any other print of this period.
Among the engravings which may be by Finiguerra
himself, one of the most interesting is the
plate of Wild Animals Hunting and Fighting, wherein
we see a number of motives taken directly from
the Picture-Chronicle—motives which reappear
again and again in works undoubtedly by other
hands. This print, as also the Encounter of a Hunting
Party with a Family of Wild Folk, is unique. In
the last-named we see a number of motives repeated
from the Wild Animals Hunting and Fighting:
such as the boar being pulled down by two
hounds, the hound chasing a hare, in the upper
right corner; and the dog, slightly to the left, devouring
the entrails of yet another hare.
The Road to Calvary and the Crucifixion is a far
more elaborate and important composition, and in
this engraving we see that which is especially noteworthy
in the Judgment Hall of Pilate—the largest
and most important of all the Fine Manner prints—the
goldsmith’s love of ornament. In the Judgment
Hall of Pilate the head-dresses, and especially
the armor, are highly elaborate, while the architecture
itself is overlaid with ornate decoration directly
drawn from the Picture-Chronicle. In the
only known impression the plate seems to have
been re-worked, in the Broad Manner, by a later
hand.
ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION OF BACCHUS
AND ARIADNE
Size of the original engraving, 8⅛ × 22 inches
In the British Museum
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. JUPITER
Size of the original engraving, 12⅝ × 8½ inches
In the British Museum
Somewhat later in date, by an engraver of the
Finiguerra School, is the Triumphal Procession of
Bacchus and Ariadne, the most joyous of all Florentine
engravings. The original design was attributed
at one time to Botticelli; and although, as
Herbert P. Horne has shown, it cannot be by
this master, it is similar in style to his compositions.
Whatever the immediate original, it shows marked
traces of classical influences, and its motive is
directly derived from antique sculpture—a sarcophagus
in all probability. “The splendid design
has suffered not only from the feebleness of the
engraving, but also from the florid manner in which
the engraver has exaggerated some of the decorative
details and added others.... In spite of
the feebleness of its execution it remains an incomparably
greater work of art than any other print
in the Fine Manner.”[2]
The Fine Manner, in which all of the engravings
hitherto mentioned are executed, owes its name to
the method employed. The engraver has incised
his outlines upon the plate—probably unbeaten
copper or some even softer metal—and for his
shading has employed a system of delicate strokes,
laid close to one another and overlaid with two,
and, at times, three, sets of cross-hatching. Such
engravings, when printed, as is usually the case, in
a greenish or grayish ink, give a result similar to a
wash drawing. In the Broad Manner the style of
engraving is based upon that of pen drawing, with
open, diagonal shade strokes and without cross-hatching.
The Broad Manner was finally developed
by Pollaiuolo and Mantegna, who modified it by a
series of delicate lines laid at an acute angle to the
heavier shadings, blending the main lines into a
harmonious whole.
“None of the sciences that descended from antiquity,”
writes Arthur M. Hind,[3] “possessed a
firmer hold on the popular imagination of the
Middle Ages than that of Astrology. That science
took as its foundation the ancient conception of
the universe, with the earth as the centre round
which all the heavenly bodies revolved in the space
of a day and a night. Encircling the earth were
the successive spheres of water, air, fire, the seven
planets (Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter,
Saturn), the firmament with the constellations
(the cœlum crystallinum), and the Primum
Mobile. To each of the planets were ascribed attributes
according to the traditional character of
the deity whose name it bore, and these attributes
were regarded as transmissible under certain conditions
to mankind. The influence of the planets
depended on their position in the heavens in respect
of the various constellations, with which each
had different relations. Each planet had what was
called its ‘house’ in one of the constellations, and
according to its position relative to these was said
to be in the ‘ascendant’ or ‘descendant’. In regard
to individual human beings the date of birth was
the decisive point, and the degree of influence
transmitted from the planets depended on the respective
degree of ‘ascendance’ or ‘descendance’ at
the particular epoch.”
The planets and their influences afforded subject
matter for many artists of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, and the finest and most important
series is that engraved in the Fine Manner
by an artist of the Finiguerra School, who has, as
usual, drawn directly upon the Picture-Chronicle
for his ornamental accessories. We can reproduce
two only from the set of seven—Jupiter and Mercury.
The inscription beneath Jupiter reads, in
part, as follows: “Jupiter is a male planet in the
sixth sphere, warm and moist, temperate by nature,
and of gentle disposition; he is sanguine, cheerful,
liberal, eloquent; he loves fine clothes, is handsome
and ruddy of aspect, and looks toward the Earth.
Tin is his metal; his days are Sunday and Thursday,
with the first, eighth, fifteenth and twenty-fourth
hours; his night is that of Wednesday; he
is friendly to the Moon, hostile to Mars....”
In the landscape we again meet with several of
the stock Finiguerra motives, the muzzled hounds,
the dog chasing the hare, etc. Of especial interest
is the group at the right—“wing-bearing Dante who
flew through Hell, through the starry Heavens and
o’er the intermediate hill of Purgatory beneath the
beauteous brows of Beatrice; and Petrarch too,
who tells again the tale of Cupid’s triumph; and
the man who, in ten days, portrays a hundred
stories (Boccaccio).”
Mercury—“eloquent and inventive ... slender
of figure, tall and well grown, with delicate lips.
Quicksilver is his metal”—sets forth various applications
of the arts and sciences. Especially interesting
is the goldsmith’s shop at the left, where we
see an engraver actually at work upon a plate.
The goldsmith is seated, his apprentice behind him,
as a prospective purchaser examines a richly ornamented
vessel. In the foreground a sculptor is
chiseling his statue, while, standing above, on a
scaffolding, a fresco painter is actively at work—a
record of the Florence of 1460 or thereabouts,
full of interest for us.
ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. MERCURY
Size of the original engraving, 12¾ × 8½ inches
In the British Museum
ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. LADY
WITH A UNICORN
Size of the original engraving, 6¼ inches in diameter
In the British Museum
To a slightly later date, 1465-1470, belong the
group of Fine Manner prints, known as the Otto
Prints, also emanating from the Finiguerra workshop.
They are not a series, in any true sense, and
owe their name—also their fortunate preservation—to
the accidental circumstance of their having
belonged at one time to Peter Ernst Otto, a merchant
and collector of Leipzig. The purpose served
by these prints—twenty-four in all—was the decoration
of box lids, either as patterns to be copied,
in the case of metal caskets, or to be colored and
pasted on the lids of wooden boxes. The escutcheons
are usually left blank, to be filled in by hand
with the device of the donor or the recipient, or
with some appropriate sentiment.
In the print entitled Two Heads in Medallions
and Two Hunting Scenes we again meet with the
animal motives taken from the Picture-Chronicle.
One of the most charming is the Lady with a
Unicorn (Chastity), in its arrangement suggestive
of the beautiful drawing by Leonardo da Vinci
in the British Museum; and its symbolic meaning
is doubtless the same. “The unicorn,” writes Leonardo
in his “Bestiarius,” “is distinguished for lack
of moderation and self-control. His passionate love
of young women makes him entirely forget his
shyness and ferocity. Oblivious of all dangers, he
comes straight to the seated maiden and falling
asleep in her lap is then caught by the hunter.”
The ermine, likewise a sign of chastity, is to be
seen at the right, gazing upward into Marietta’s
face.
Still later than the Otto prints, and greatly inferior
to them in execution, are the three illustrations
for Il Monte Sancto di Dio, of 1477; and the
nineteen engravings for Dante’s Divina Commedia,
with Landino’s Commentary, of 1481. Il Monte
Sancto di Dio is the first book in Italy or in Germany
in which there appear illustrations from engraved
plates printed on the text page. This entailed
much additional labor, and was soon discontinued
in favor of the wood-block, which could be
printed simultaneously with the letterpress, and
was not taken up again until nearly the end of the
sixteenth century.
Alike by tradition and internal evidence, Botticelli
is unquestionably the author of the Dante
designs; but no artist has been suggested as the
probable designer of the three illustrations for
Il Monte Sancto di Dio. In the first illustration the
costume and general attitude of the young gallant
to the left are strongly reminiscent of the Otto
prints. The lower portion of the plate shows all the
characteristics of the Fine Manner, but the angel
heads are treated in a simpler and more open linear
method. The Christian’s Ascent to the Glory of Paradise
is allegorically represented by a ladder placed
firmly in the ground of widespread Knowledge and
Humility, and reaching up to the triple mountain
of Faith, Hope, and Charity, on the summit of
which stands the Saviour. This ladder is called Perseverance,
one of its sides being Prayer, the other
Sacrament. It has eleven steps: Prudence, Temperance,
Fortitude, Justice, etc.
ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. THE CHRISTIAN’S ASCENT TO
THE GLORY OF PARADISE. FROM “IL MONTE SANCTO DI DIO,”
FLORENCE, 1477
Size of the original engraving, 9⅞ × 7 inches
In the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. DANTE AND VIRGIL WITH THE VISION
OF BEATRICE. FROM THE “DIVINA COMMEDIA,” FLORENCE, 1481
Size of the original engraving, 3½ × 6⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The second illustration depicts the glory of Paradise;
the third the punishment of Hell, the main
motives of the last-named being adapted from the
fresco attributed to Orcagna, in the Campo Santo
at Pisa.
In the illustrations to the Divina Commedia, of
1481, there is little left of the beauty which the
original designs must have possessed. They are,
indeed, “disguised into puerility by the feebleness
of the engraver”; but, none the less, they remain,
with the exception of Botticelli’s superb series of
drawings on vellum, in Berlin and in the Vatican,
unquestionably the best, one might say the only,
satisfactory illustrations of Dante’s text. No known
copy contains more than the first three engravings
printed directly upon the page itself. In every
other case, where a greater number of illustrations
appear, they are printed separately and pasted in
place, indicating the difficulty experienced by the
Renaissance printer in making his plates register
with the letterpress.
The first print of the series shows Dante lost in
the wood, emerging therefrom, and his meeting
with Virgil—three subjects on a single plate. The
second represents Dante and Virgil with the Vision
of Beatrice. Dante and Virgil are seen twice—first
to the left, where Dante doubts whether to follow
the guidance of Virgil further, and again on the
slope of the hill to the right, where Virgil relates
how the vision of Beatrice appeared to him. Near
the summit of the rocky mountain is seen the
entrance to Hell.
“Of the extant engravings in the Broad Manner,
unquestionably the most remarkable is the large
print on two sheets of the Assumption of the Virgin,
after Botticelli. The original design [no longer
known to exist], whether drawing or painting, from
which this engraving was taken, must have been
among the grandest and most vigorous works of
the last period of Botticelli’s art. The large and
rugged treatment of the figures of the apostles,
their strange mane-like hair and beards, their fervent
and agitated gestures and attitudes, lend to
this part of the design a forcible and primitive
character, which recalls, though largely, perhaps,
in an accidental fashion, the grand and impressive
art of Andrea del Castagno. Not less vigorous in
conception, but of greater beauty of form and
movement, is the figure of the Virgin, and the
motive and arrangement of the angels who form a
‘mandorla’ around her are among the most lovely
and imaginative of the many inventions of the kind
which Botticelli has left us.”[4] In the distant valley
is a view of Rome showing the Pantheon, the Column
of Trajan, the Colosseum, and other buildings.
ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. ASSUMPTION
OF THE VIRGIN (After Botticelli)
Size of the original engraving, 32⅝ × 22¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. TRIUMPH OF
LOVE. FROM THE TRIUMPHS OF PETRARCH.
Size of the original engraving, 10⅜ × 6¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
If the Assumption of the Virgin is the noblest
print in the Broad Manner, the Triumphs of Petrarch—a
set of six prints—may be said to possess
the greatest charm, not less by its subject than by
its treatment. Petrarch first saw Laura on April 6,
1327, in the Church of Santa Clara at Avignon, and
“in the same city, on the same 6th day of the same
month of April, in the year 1348, the bright light
of her life was taken away from the light of this
earth.” The poet’s aim in composing these Trionfi
is the same which he proposed to himself in the
Canzoniere: namely, “to return in thought, from
time to time, now to the beginning, now to the
progress, and now to the end of his passion, taking
by the way frequent opportunities of rendering
praise and honor to the single and exalted object of
his love. To reach this aim he devised a description
of man in his various conditions of life, wherein
he might naturally find occasion to speak of himself
and of his Laura.
“Man in his first stage of youth is the slave of
appetites, which may all be included under the
generic name of Love, or Self-Love. But as he
gains understanding, he sees the impropriety of
such a condition, so that he strives advisedly against
those appetites and overcomes them by means of
Chastity, that is, by denying himself the opportunity
of satisfying them. Amid these struggles and
victories Death overtakes him and makes victors
and vanquished equal by taking them all out of the
world. Nevertheless, it has no power to destroy the
memory of a man, who by illustrious and honorable
deeds seeks to survive his own death. Such a man
truly lives through a long course of ages by means
of his Fame. But Time at length obliterates all
memory of him, and he finds, in the last resort, that
his only sure hope of living forever is by joy in
God and by partaking with God in his blessed
Eternity.
“Thus Love triumphs over man, Chastity over
Love, and Death over both alike; Fame triumphs
over Death, Time over Fame, and Eternity over
Time.”[5]
With the exception of the first plate, The Triumph
of Love, none of these engravings illustrates,
in any strict sense of the word, the text of Petrarch’s
poem. It is the spirit which the engraver
has interpreted. Who may have been the designer
we know not, but they show certain affinities to the
work of Pesellino and Baldovinetti.
ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. TRIUMPH OF
CHASTITY. FROM THE TRIUMPHS OF PETRARCH
Size of the original engraving, 10 × 6⅜ inches
In the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University
ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. LIBYAN SIBYL
Size of the original engraving, 7 × 4¼ inches
In the British Museum
In the first plate, Cupid, the blind archer, with
flame-tipped arrow, is poised upon a ball rising
from a flaming vase, the base of which, in its turn,
rests upon flame. Jupiter(?), chained, is seated in
the front of the car, while Samson, bearing a
column, walks upon the further side. Four prancing
steeds draw the car; behind, Love’s victims
follow in endless procession. In the second plate,
Chastity stands upon an urn; in front of her kneels
Cupid, still blindfolded, with his broken arrow beside
him. Two unicorns, symbols of chastity, draw
the car, while upon the banner borne by the maiden
at the extreme right there appears the symbolic
ermine. Then follow in order the Triumphs of
Death, of Fame, of Time, and of Eternity.
This series of illustrations reappears, somewhat
modified and simplified, in the form of woodcuts,
in the editions of the Trionfi published in Venice
in 1488, 1490, 1492, and in Florence in 1499.
We have already referred to the Evangelists and
Apostles engraved by the German, Master E. S. of
1466. It is from him that the anonymous Florentine
engraver borrowed his figures, in many cases
leaving the form of the drapery unchanged but
enriching it with elaborate designs in the manner
of Finiguerra. The Prophet Ezekiel is thus compounded
of St. John and St. Peter, while Amos is
copied in reverse from St. Paul. The seated figure
of Daniel, in its turn, is derived from Martin
Schongauer’s engraving, Christ Before Pilate, but
the throne upon which he is seated is strongly
reminiscent of the Picture-Chronicle, and likewise
recalls Botticelli’s early painting of Fortitude.
The Tiburtine Sibyl is derived from St. Matthew,
who, in changing his position, has likewise changed
his sex. The precedent thus established has been
followed by St. John, transformed into the Libyan
Sibyl in the Fine Manner, with the addition of a
flying veil, to the right, copied from the Woman
with the Escutcheon, also by the Master E. S. In the
Broad Manner print the figure of this Sibyl gains
in dignity by the elimination of much superfluous
ornament upon her outer garment, and from the
fact that she now sits in a more upright posture,
the Fine Manner print still suggesting the crouching
attitude of its Northern prototype. It is to the
influence, if not to the hand, of Botticelli that such
improvement is most likely due.
The twenty-four Prophets and the twelve Sibyls,
engraved both in the Fine and in the Broad Manner
of the Finiguerra School, are individually and collectively
among the most delightful productions of
Italian art. It was doubtless as illustrations of
mystery plays or pageants in Florence that this
series of engravings was designed, and we are able
to reconstruct from the Triumphs of Petrarch, and
from these prints, a Florentine street pageant at
its loveliest.
ANONYMOUS NORTH ITALIAN, XV CENTURY. THE
GENTLEMAN. FROM THE TAROCCHI PRINTS
(E Series)
Size of the original engraving, 7⅛ × 4 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
ANONYMOUS NORTH ITALIAN, XV CENTURY. CLIO.
FROM THE TAROCCHI PRINTS (S Series)
Size of the original engraving, 7⅛ × 4 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
However great their beauty and however strong
the fascination which they exert, they have a rival
in the series of fifty instructive prints, which, for
many years, were miscalled the Tarocchi Cards of
Mantegna. Tarocchi cards they are not, and of
Mantegna’s influence, direct or indirect, there
would seem to be no trace whatsoever. They are
of North Italian origin and are the work, in all
probability, of some anonymous Venetian engraver,
working from Venetian or Ferrarese originals,
about 1465—contemporary, therefore, with
the Florentine engravings of the Prophets and Sibyls.
Forming, apparently, a pictorial cyclopædia of the
mediæval universe, with its systematic classification
of the various powers of Heaven and Earth,
they divide themselves into five groups of ten cards
each. First we have the ranks and conditions of
men from Beggar to Pope; next Apollo and the nine
Muses; then the Liberal Arts, with the addition
of Poetry, Philosophy, and Theology, in order to
make up the ten; next the Seven Virtues, the set
being brought up to the required number by the
addition of Chronico, the genius of Time, Cosmico,
the genius of the Universe, and Iliaco, the genius
of the Sun. The fifth group is based on the Seven
Planets, together with the Sphere of the Fixed
Stars and the Primum Mobile, which imparts its
own revolving motion to all the spheres within it;
and enfolding all the Empyrean Sphere, the abode
of Heavenly Wisdom.
Much wisdom and many words have been expended
upon the still unsolved riddle as to which
of the two sets, known respectively as the E series
and the S series (from the letters which appear in
the lower left-hand corners of the ten cards of the
Sorts and Conditions of Men) may claim priority of
date. Both series are in the Fine Manner, the outlines
clearly defined, the shadings and modelling
indicated with delicate burin strokes, crossed and
re-crossed so as to give a tonal effect. These delicate
strokes soon wore out in printing, and the structural
lines of the figures then emerge in all their
beauty. It may seem absurd that one should admire
impressions from plates obviously worn, but
the critic would do well to suspend his condemnation,
since the Tarocchi Prints present many and
manifold forms of beauty—in the early impressions
a delicate and bloom-like quality; in certain somewhat
later proofs, a charm of line which recalls the
art of the Far East.
ANONYMOUS NORTH ITALIAN, XV CENTURY. THE SUN.
FROM THE TAROCCHI PRINTS (E Series)
Size of the original engraving, 7⅛ × 4 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
ANONYMOUS NORTH ITALIAN, XV CENTURY. ANGEL OF
THE EIGHTH SPHERE. FROM THE TAROCCHI PRINTS
(E Series)
Size of the original engraving, 7⅛ × 4 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Gentleman is the fifth in order in the first
group of the Sorts and Conditions of Men, and is
from the so-called E series (claimed by Sir Sidney
Colvin and Mr. Arthur M. Hind, of the British
Museum, to be the earlier of the two sets). The
sequence runs: (1) The Beggar, (2) The Servant,
(3) The Artisan, (4) The Merchant, (5) The Gentleman,
(6) The Knight, (7) The Doge, (8) The
King, (9) The Emperor, (10) The Pope.
Clio is the ninth of the Muses and is from the
S series (placed first in point of time, by Kristeller,
and about ten years later than the E series, by the
British Museum authorities).
The Sun naturally finds his place in the group of
Planets and Spheres. There is a delightful and
childish touch in the way in which Phæton is pictured
as a little boy falling headlong into the river
Po, which conveniently flows immediately beneath
him. To this group belongs likewise the Angel of the
Eighth Sphere, the Sphere of the Fixed Stars, one
of the loveliest prints in the entire set, both in
arrangement and in execution.
Nothing could be in greater contrast to the gracefulness
of such a print as the above than the Battle
of Naked Men by Antonio Pollaiuolo, “the stupendous
Florentine”—if one may borrow Dante’s
title; but, for the moment, we will hold Pollaiuolo
and his one engraving in reserve while we glance at
the work of Christofano Robetta, who, born in
Florence in 1462, was consequently the junior of
Pollaiuolo by thirty years. As an engraver, Robetta
is inferior to the anonymous master to whom we
owe the E series of the Tarocchi prints. His style
is somewhat dry, and the individual lines are lacking
in beauty; but his plates have that indefinable
and indescribable fascination and charm which is
the peculiar possession of Italian engraving and of
the Florentine masters in particular. The shaping
influences which determined his choice and treatment
of subject are Botticelli, and, in a much
larger measure, Filippino Lippi, though only in a
few cases can he be shown to have worked directly
from that painter’s designs. The Adoration of the
Magi is obviously inspired by Filippino Lippi’s
painting in the Uffizi, though whether Robetta
actually worked from the painting itself, or, as
seems more probable, translated one of Filippino’s
drawings, is an interesting question. The fact that
the engraving is in reverse of the painting proves
nothing; but there are so many points of difference
between them—notably the introduction of the
charming group of three angels above the Virgin
and Child—that one can hardly think Robetta
would have needlessly made so many and important
modifications of the painting itself, if a drawing
had been available. It is interesting, though of
minor importance, that the hat of the King to
the right, which lies on the ground, is copied in
reverse from Schongauer’s Adoration, and that the
Allegory of the Power of Love, one of Robetta’s most
charming subjects, is engraved upon the reverse
side of the plate of the Adoration of the Magi, the
copper-plate itself being now in the Print Room
of the British Museum. Whether the Allegory of
Abundance is entirely Robetta’s, or whether the
design was suggested by another master’s painting
or drawing, can be only a matter of conjecture. It
shows, however, so many of the characteristics
which we associate with his work that we may give
him the benefit of the doubt and consider him as
its “onlie begetter.”
CRISTOFANO ROBETTA. ADORATION OF THE MAGI
Size of the original engraving, 11⅝ × 11 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
ANTONIO POLLAIUOLO. BATTLE OF NAKED MEN
Size of the original engraving, 15¾ × 23½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
Hercules and the Hydra and Hercules and Antæus
show so markedly the influence of Pollaiuolo that
we may conclude them to have been taken from
the two small panels in the Uffizi; though, in the
case of the first named, Pollaiuolo’s original sketch,
now in the British Museum, may also have served
Robetta.
Whether Pollaiuolo based his technical method
upon that of Mantegna and his School, or whether
Mantegna’s own engravings were inspired by his
Florentine contemporary, is an interesting, but
thus far unanswered, question. Pollaiuolo’s one
print, the Battle of Naked Men, is engraved in the
Broad Manner, somewhat modified by the use of a
light stroke laid at an acute angle between the
parallels. The outlines of the figures are strongly
incised; while the treatment of the background
lends color to the supposition that, in his youth,
Pollaiuolo engraved in niello, as well as furnished
designs to be executed by Finiguerra and his
School. In this masterpiece the artist has summed
up his knowledge of the human form, and has expressed,
in a more convincing and vigorous measure
than has any other engraver in the history of
the art, the strain and stress of violent motion and
the fury of combat.
“What is it,” asks Bernhard Berenson, “that
makes us return to this sheet with ever-renewed,
ever-increased pleasure? Surely it is not the
hideous faces of most of the figures and their
scarcely less hideous bodies. Nor is it the pattern
as decorative design, which is of great beauty indeed,
but not at all in proportion to the spell exerted
upon us. Least of all is it—for most of us—an
interest in the technique or history of engraving.
No, the pleasure we take in these savagely battling
forms arises from their power to directly communicate
life, to immensely heighten our sense of vitality.
Look at the combatant prostrate on the
ground and his assailant, bending over, each intent
on stabbing the other. See how the prostrate man
plants his foot on the thigh of his enemy and note
the tremendous energy he exerts to keep off the
foe, who, turning as upon a pivot, with his grip on
the other’s head, exerts no less force to keep the
advantage gained. The significance of all these
muscular strains and pressures is so rendered that
we cannot help realizing them; we imagine ourselves
imitating all the movements and exerting
the force required for them—and all without the
least effort on our side. If all this without moving
a muscle, what should we feel if we too had exerted
ourselves? And thus while under the spell of
this illusion—this hyperæsthesia not bought with
drugs and not paid for with cheques drawn on our
vitality—we feel as if the elixir of life, not our own
sluggish blood, were coursing through our veins.”[6]
Pollaiuolo is the one great original engraver
Florence produced, and with him we bring to a
close our all too brief study of Florentine engraving.
ITALIAN ENGRAVING: THE FLORENTINES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Le Peintre Graveur. By Adam Bartsch. 21 volumes. Vienna: 1803-1821.
Volume 13, Early Italian Engravers.
The Drawings of the Florentine Painters. By Bernhard Berenson.
2 volumes. 180 illustrations. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company. 1903.
Catalogue of Early Italian Engravings Preserved in the Department
of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. By Arthur Mayger Hind.
Edited by Sidney Colvin. 20 illustrations. London: The Trustees. 1910.
———. Illustrations to the Catalogue ... 198 plates. London:
The Trustees. 1909.
Some Early Italian Engravers Before the Time of Marcantonio. By
Arthur Mayger Hind. 22 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol.
2, No. 3, pp. 253-289. Boston. 1912.
Sulle origini dell’incisione in rame in Italia. By Paul Kristeller. 4
illustrations. Archivio Storico dell’Arte, Vol. 6, p. 391-400. Rome. 1893.
Le Peintre-Graveur. By J. D. Passavant. 6 volumes. Leipzig: Rudolph
Weigel. 1860-1864. Volumes 1 and 5, Early Italian Engravers.
Des Types et des manières des maitres graveurs ... en Italie,
en Allemagne, dans les Pays-Bas et en France. By Jules Renouvier.
2 volumes. Montpellier: Boehm, 1853-1855. Volume 1, Engravers of the
Fifteenth Century.
Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.
By Giorgio Vasari. Translated by Mrs. Jonathan Foster. With commentary
by J. P. Richter. 6 volumes. London: George Bell & Sons. 1890-1892.
Finiguerra, Maso (1426-1464)
A Florentine Picture-Chronicle; being a Series of Ninety-nine
Drawings Representing Scenes and Personages of Ancient History,
Sacred and Profane; reproduced from the Originals in the British
Museum. Edited by Sidney Colvin. 99 reproductions and 117 text illustrations.
London: B. Quaritch. 1898.
Sandro Botticelli. By Herbert P. Horne. 43 plates. London: George Bell
& Sons. 1905. pp. 77-86.
The Planets (c. 1460)
The Seven Planets. By Friedrich Lippmann. Translated by Florence Simmonds.
43 reproductions. London. 1895. (International Chalcographical
Society. 1895.)
The Otto Prints (c. 1465-1470)
Florentinische Zierstücke aus dem XV. Jahrhundert. Edited by Paul
Kristeller. 25 reproductions. Berlin: Bruno Cassirer. 1909. (Graphische
Gesellschaft. Publication 10.)
Delle ‘Imprese amorose’ nelle più antiche incisione fiorentine. By
A. Warburg. Rivista d’Arte, Vol. 3 (July-August). Florence. 1905.
Engravings in Books (1477-1481)
Works of the Italian Engravers in the Fifteenth Century; Reproduced
... with an Introduction. By George William Reid. 20
reproductions on 19 plates. First Series: Il Libro del Monte Sancto di Dio,
1477; La Divina Commedia of Dante; and the Triumphs of Petrarch.
Illustrations of the Divina Commedia, Florence, 1481
Sandro Botticelli. By Herbert P. Horne. 43 plates. London: George Bell
& Sons. 1908. pp. 75-77, 190-255.
Zeichnungen von Sandro Botticelli zu Dante’s Goettlicher Komoedie
nach den Originalen im K. Kupferstichkabinet zu Berlin. Edited
by Friedrich Lippmann. 20 reproductions of engravings bound with text.
With portfolio of 84 reproductions of the drawings.
Supplemented by—Die acht Handzeichnungen des Sandro Botticelli
zu Dantes Göttlicher Komödie im Vatikan. Edited by Josef
Strzygowski. With portfolio of 8 reproductions.
Triumphs of Petrarch (c. 1470-1480)
Pétrarque; ses études d’art, son influence sur les artistes, ses
portraits and ceux de Laure, l’illustration de ses écrits. By Victor
Masséna, Prince d’Essling, and Eugène Muntz. 21 plates and 191 text illustrations.
Paris: Gazette des Beaux-Arts. 1902.
Études sur les Triomphes de Pétrarque. By Victor Masséna, Prince
d’Essling. 6 illustrations. Gazette des Beaux-Arts. 2 parts. Part I. Vol. 35
(second period). pp. 311-321. Part II. Vol. 36 (second period). pp. 25-34.
Paris. 1887.
Petrarch; His Life and Times. By H. C. Hollway-Calthrop. 24 illustrations.
London: Methuen & Co. 1907.
Broad Manner Plates (c. 1470-1480)
Sandro Botticelli. By Herbert P. Horne. 43 plates. London: George Bell
& Sons. 1908. pp. 288-291.
The Tarocchi Prints (c. 1467)
Die Tarocchi; zwei italienische Kupferstichfolgen aus dem XV.
Jahrhundert. Edited by Paul Kristeller. 100 reproductions on 50 plates.
Berlin: Bruno Cassirer. 1910. (Graphische Gesellschaft. Extraordinary
Publication 2.)
Der venezianische Kupferstich im XV. Jahrhundert. By Paul Kristeller.
6 illustrations. Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für vervielfältigende
Kunst, Vol. 30, No. 1. Vienna. 1907.
Origine des cartes à jouer. By R. Merlin. About 600 reproductions.
Paris: L’auteur. 1869.
The Tarocchi Prints. By Emil H. Richter. 13 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s
Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 37-89. Boston. 1916.
Catalogue of Playing and Other Cards in the British Museum. By
William Hughes Willshire. 78 reproductions on 24 plates. London: The
Trustees. 1876.
Pollaiuolo, Antonio (1432-1498)
Florentine Painters of the Renaissance. By Bernhard Berenson. New
York: Putnam’s Sons. 1899. pp. 47-57.
Antonio Pollaiuolo. By Maud Cruttwell. 51 illustrations. London: Duckworth
and Company. 1907.
Note su Mantegna e Pollaiuolo. By Arthur Mayger Hind. 2 illustrations.
L’Arte, Vol. 9, pp. 303-305. Rome. 1906.
GERMAN ENGRAVING: THE MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM CABINET AND ALBRECHT DÜRER
WITH the exception of Martin Schongauer,
none of Dürer’s immediate predecessors better
repays a thorough study, or exerts a more potent
fascination, than the Master of the Amsterdam
Cabinet. The earlier writers, from Duchesne to
Dutuit, were united in their opinion that this engraver
was a Netherlander; but Max Lehrs, following
the track opened up by Harzen, has proved
conclusively that the Master of the Amsterdam
Cabinet (so called because the largest collection of
his engravings—eighty subjects out of the eighty-nine
which are known—is preserved in the Royal
Print Rooms in Amsterdam) was not a Netherlander
but a South German, a native of Rhenish
Suabia—the very artist, in fact, who designed the
illustrations of the Planets and their influences and
the various arts and occupations of men, for the
so-called “Medieval House Book” in the collection
of Prince von Waldburg-Wolfegg.
In subject-matter he owes little to his predecessors,
and in technique he is an isolated phenomenon.
St. Martin and the Beggar and St. Michael and
the Dragon show that he was acquainted with the
work of Martin Schongauer; the Ecstasy of St.
Mary Magdalen is obviously based upon a similar
engraving by the Master E. S. of 1466; but for the
most part he stands alone. He seems to have
worked entirely in dry-point upon some soft metal—lead
or pewter, perhaps—and the ink which he
used, of a soft grayish tint, combines with the
breadth and softness of the lines to impart to his
prints much of the character of drawings in silver-point.
The Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet has
treated a wide range of subjects, his preference
being for scenes of everyday life. His prints show
appreciation of the beauties of landscape, his skill
in the treatment of wide spaces is masterly, and
there is a beauty and sweetness in the expression of
his faces which makes him a worthy rival of
Martin Schongauer himself. He has left us no
purely ornamental designs, such as might serve in
the decoration of vessels used in the church, and
we may infer, from the character of his engravings,
that he was a painter, who used the dry-point as
a diversion, rather than a professional engraver,
pursuing his craft as a means of livelihood. In
power of composition he can hardly rank with
Martin Schongauer, and in range of intellect he
falls short of the heights reached by Albrecht
Dürer; but his very limitations, perhaps, render
him a more companionable personage, and his
modernity makes an immediate appeal to us all.
MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM CABINET. ECSTASY
OF ST. MARY MAGDALEN
Size of the original engraving, 7⅝ × 5¼ inches
In the Royal Print Room, Amsterdam
MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM CABINET. CRUCIFIXION
Size of the original engraving, 6 × 5¼ inches
In the Royal Print Room, Amsterdam
The Ecstasy of St. Mary Magdalen is one of his
earliest plates and is a free translation of the same
subject by the Master E. S. It would seem as
though his dry-point was the immediate original
of Dürer’s woodcut. The position of the Magdalen’s
hands is the same in both compositions, but Dürer
has added a landscape which, admirable though it
be, detracts from the main interest of his print.
The Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet, in a
second rendering, herewith reproduced, has eliminated
all superfluous or distracting details and
imparted a surprising degree of grace and purity
to the lovely design. Anything like a chronological
arrangement of the master’s work would
be difficult, but one may safely assume that this
beautiful engraving belongs to the latest and most
mature period of his art, to which period we also
may assign the Two Lovers.
As a rule, his least successful engravings are those
dealing with religious themes. At times, however,
as in the Crucifixion, he rises to heights of dramatic
intensity, and Dürer may be indebted more
than we realize to this rendering of the divine
tragedy. Aristotle and Phyllis and Solomon’s Idolatry
are satirical illustrations of the follies of sages
in love. Both plates are illumined by a truly
modern sense of humor, while the arrangement of
the figures within the spaces to be filled is admirable.
Such subjects as The Three Living and the Three
Dead Kings and Young Man and Death are variations
upon a theme which was uppermost in the
minds of many men at this time, when the Ars
Moriendi and the Dance of Death were constant
reminders of man’s mortality. In agreeable contrast
is the dry-point of Two Lovers—a little masterpiece—one
of his most charming designs. “The
sweet shyness of the maiden, the tender glances of
the lover and the soft pressure of their hands are
rendered with an inimitable grace, and the work
is altogether of such exceptional quality that we
may count this delightful picture as one of the
rarest gems of German engraving in the fifteenth
century.”[7]
The Stag Hunt is filled with the spirit of outdoor
life, the exhilaration of the chase, and the
joy of the hounds in pursuing their quarry. No
other engraver of the fifteenth century has left us
any such truthful rendering of a hunting scene, and
the life-enhancing quality of this little dry-point
makes even Dürer’s rendering of animal forms
seem cold and relatively lifeless.
MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM CABINET. STAG HUNT
Size of the original engraving, 3⅝ × 6¾ inches
In the Royal Print Room, Amsterdam
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM CABINET. ST. GEORGE
Size of the original engraving, 5⅝ × 4⅛ inches
In the British Museum
The master’s knowledge of the anatomy of the
horse, and his treatment of that noble beast, unfortunately
fall far short of his rendering of the dogs
and stags in the Stag Hunt. The figure of St. George
is sufficiently graceful and convincing, but the horse
(seemingly of the rocking-horse variety) can hardly
be proclaimed a complete success. In spite of this
obvious defect it is one of the artist’s finest plates,
remarkable for its exceptional force and animation.
The unique proof, of which the British Museum is
the fortunate possessor, is in splendid condition
and rich in burr.
And now, with some trepidation of spirit, we approach
Albrecht Dürer and his engraved work.
His many-sidedness foredooms to failure any attempt
at an adequate and comprehensive treatment.
His compositions, as Max Allihn justly says,
may fittingly be likened to the Sphinx of the old
legend; for “they attack everyone who, either as
critic, historian or harmless wanderer, ventures in
the realm of art, and propose to him their unsolvable
riddles.”
Of his own work Dürer says: “What beauty may
be I know not. Art is hidden in nature and whosoever
can tear it out has it,” and his life-long quest
of knowledge, his truly German reverence for fact,
hangs like a millstone around his neck. “Of a
truth,” writes Raphael, “this man would have surpassed
us all if he had had the masterpieces of art
constantly before him,” Raphael himself—“Raphael
the Divine”—hardly paralyzed æsthetic criticism
for a longer period than has Dürer, and in
studying his engravings, if the student would see
them for what they are, as works of art, and not
through the enchanted, oftentimes stupefying, maze
of metaphysics, he must be prepared for the gibes
and verbal brick-bats of his contemporaries, who
hold in reverence all that has the sanction of long-continued
repetition by authority after authority.
“If you see it in a book it’s true; if you see it in
a German book it’s very true,” applies with only
too telling a force to a considerable share of Dürer
speculation. For better or worse I cannot but think
that Dürer’s prime intention in his engravings was
an artistic one, though obviously this intention was
often overlaid with a desire to supply an existing
demand and to introduce, into otherwise simple
compositions, traditional moralistic motives which
should render his engravings more marketable at
the fairs, where mostly they were sold. So many
and so fascinating are the facets of Dürer’s personality,
so interesting is he as a man in whose mind
meet, and sometimes blend, the ideas of the
Middle Ages with those almost of our own time,
that if we are to study, even in the briefest and
most cursory fashion, his engraved work, we must
perforce confine ourselves strictly to the artistic
content of his plates and not be seduced into the
by-ways of speculation which lead anywhere—or,
more often, nowhere.
Earliest of his authenticated engravings, without
monogram and without date, crude in handling,
possibly suggested by the work of some earlier
master, and in all probability executed before his
first journey to Venice (that is to say, before or in
the year 1490) is the Ravisher, susceptible of as
many and as varied interpretations as there are
authorities; from a man using violence, to the
struggle for existence. It has even been connected
in some way with a belief in witchcraft! The Holy
Family with the Dragonfly, to which Koehler gives
second place in his chronological arrangement of
Dürer’s engravings, shows an astonishing advance
in technique and in composition. It is undated, but
the monogram is in its early form. The galley and
the two gondolas, in the distant water to the right,
would seem to indicate that it was engraved in or
about the year 1494, upon Dürer’s return from
Venice, and it is probably his first plate after his
return to Nuremberg. There is a sweetness and an
attractiveness in the face of the Virgin which points
to an acquaintance with Schongauer’s engraving,
the Virgin with a Parrot. The poise of the head and
the flowing hair lend color to this supposition.
To how great an extent not only the engravings,
but the theories, of Jacopo de’ Barbari may have
influenced Dürer in such plates as St. Jerome in
Penitence, the Carrying Off of Amymone, Hercules,
or the Four Naked Women, is difficult to determine.
It may have been considerable, though, at times,
one cannot help wondering whether the theory of
proportion of the human body, of which Jacopo
spoke to Dürer, but concerning which he refused
(or was unable) to give him further detailed particulars,
may not have been more or less of a “bluff,”
since there is no record of Jacopo having committed
the results of his studies to writing, and in
his engravings there is little evidence of any logical
theory of proportion. That a potent influence was
at work shaping Dürer’s development is clear, and
the figure of St. Jerome undoubtedly owes a good
deal to Jacopo. The landscape is all Dürer’s own,
the first of a long series finely conceived and admirably
executed. The long, sweeping lines in the foreground
recall the manner of Jacopo de’ Barbari,
but otherwise the engraving owes little technically
to that artist.
ALBRECHT DÜRER. VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH THE
MONKEY
Size of the original engraving, 7½ × 4¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
ALBRECHT DÜRER. FOUR NAKED WOMEN
Size of the original engraving, 7½ × 5¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Virgin and Child with the Monkey is the most
brilliant of Dürer’s engravings in his earlier period.
In the opinion of many students it is, likewise, the
most beautiful and dignified, not only in the figures
of the Virgin and Child, but also in the breadth and
richness of the landscape. The loveliness of the background
was early recognized, and several Italian
engravers, including Giulio Campagnola, availed
themselves of it. When Dürer’s drawings and water-colors
are more generally known, he will be acclaimed
one of the masters of landscape. There is a
freshness, a breeziness, an “out-of-doors” quality
in his water-color of the Weierhaus which will surprise
those who hitherto have known him only
through his engraved work, wherein the landscape
undergoes a certain formalizing process.
The Virgin and Child with the Monkey is so
beautiful in simplicity of handling, so delightful in
arrangement of black and white, that it is hard to
reconcile oneself to the comparatively coarse line
work, the insensitiveness to beauty of form, the
disregard of anatomy, shown in Four Naked Women
of 1497—Dürer’s first dated plate—especially the
woman standing to the left, who combines the
slackness of Jacopo de’ Barbari at his worst with
the heaviness and puffiness possible only to a
Northerner unacquainted with the classic ideals
of the Italian Renaissance.
Speculation is again rife as to the meaning, if
it has a meaning, of the skull and bone on the
ground, and the devil emerging from the flames at
the left. The engraving seems to be a straightforward,
naturalistic study of the nude, with these
accessories thrown in to give the subject a moralizing
air which would make it palatable to the
artist’s contemporaries. There could hardly be a
greater contrast to this frankly hideous treatment
of the human form than Hercules (called also the
Effects of Jealousy, the Great Satyr, etc.). In this
plate we are able, as in few others—the one notable
exception being the Adam and Eve of 1504—to
follow out, step by step, Dürer’s upbuilding of the
composition. The figures are, in this case, idealized
according to the canons of classical beauty, rather
than realistically rendered. Incidentally, the landscape
is quite the most beautiful which appears in
any of Dürer’s engravings. Its spaciousness instantly
commands our admiration, and the gradation
from light to dark, to indicate differing planes
in the trees, is managed in a masterly manner.
ALBRECHT DÜRER. HERCULES
Size of the original engraving, 13¾ × 8¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
ANONYMOUS NORTH ITALIAN, XV CENTURY. DEATH OF
ORPHEUS
Size of the original engraving, 5¾ × 8⅜ inches
In the Kunsthalle, Hamburg
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
ALBRECHT DÜRER. DEATH OF ORPHEUS
Size of the original drawing, 11⅜ × 8⅞ inches
In the Kunsthalle, Hamburg
ALBRECHT DÜRER. BATTLE OF THE SEA-GODS. (After Mantegna)
Size of the original drawing, 11½ × 15¼ inches
In the Albertina, Vienna
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
Beginning with the Death of Orpheus, engraved
by some anonymous North Italian master working
in the Fine Manner of the Tarocchi Cards, the next
step is Dürer’s pen drawing, dated 1494. The figures
of Orpheus and of the two Thracian Mænads
remain unchanged, as does also the little child running
towards the left. Dürer has, however, changed
the lute into a lyre, as being more suited to Orpheus,
and has added the beautiful group of trees
which reappears, little changed, in his engraving of
Hercules. There is a drawing of the Mantegna
School which Dürer may, or may not, have seen;
but the face of Orpheus in his drawing shows certain
unmistakable Mantegna characteristics, far
removed from the North Italian Fine Manner
print. From Mantegna’s engraving, the Battle of
the Sea-Gods (right-hand portion), Dürer has borrowed
the figure of the reclining woman to the left
and the Satyr. That he was acquainted with this
engraving by Mantegna is attested by a drawing
of 1494. The man standing to the right, with legs
spread wide apart, wearing a fantastic helmet in
the shape of a cock, recalls the work of Pollaiuolo, by
whom there exists a similar drawing, now in Berlin.
From these various elements Dürer builds up his composition.
Its full meaning he alone knew. It has remained
an unsolved riddle from his time to our own.
The Carrying Off of Amymone belongs to this same
period. Here Dürer has again used the motive
taken from Mantegna’s engraving, the Battle of the
Sea Gods; but in this instance he follows his original
much more closely. Dürer alludes to this print in
the diary of his journey to the Netherlands as The
Sea Wonder (Das Meerwunder); and although the
interpretations given to it are many and various,
its true meaning, as in the case of the Hercules,
remains a matter of conjecture.
By 1503, the year to which belongs the Coat-of-Arms
with the Skull, and also, in all probability, the
magnificent Coat-of-Arms with the Cock, Dürer
seems to have overcome successfully all technical
difficulties and is absolute master of his medium.
From this time onwards, although his manner
undergoes certain modifications in the direction of
fuller color and of a more accurate rendering of
texture, his language is adequate for anything he
may wish to say, and he is free to address himself
to the solution of scientific problems, such as are
involved in the elucidation of his canon of human
proportion, or the still deeper questions which
stirred so profoundly the speculative minds of his
time.
With the exception of Hercules, Adam and Eve is
the only engraving by Dürer of which trial proofs,
properly so-called, exist, whereby we can study
Dürer’s method. First the outlines were lightly
laid in; then the background was carried forward
and substantially completed. In the first trial proof
Adam’s right leg alone is finished; but in the second
trial proof he is completed to the waist. This
method of procedure is significant, in view of the
endless controversies, based upon an incomplete
study of Dürer’s technique, regarding the use of
preliminary etching in many plates of his middle
and later period.
ALBRECHT DÜRER. ADAM AND EVE
Size of the original engraving, 9¾ x 8⅝ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
ALBRECHT DÜRER. APOLLO AND DIANA
Size of the original engraving, 4½ × 2¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
In Adam and Eve Dürer has summed up the
knowledge obtained by actual observation and by
a series of drawings and studies extending over a
number of years, and combined with it his theoretical
working out of the proportions of the human
figure, male and female. In no other plate has he
lavished such loving care upon the representation
of the human form. The flesh is, so to speak,
caressed with the burin, as though, once and for all,
the artist wished to prove to his contemporaries
that the graver sufficed for the rendering of the
most beautiful, the most subtle and scientific
problems. That Dürer himself was satisfied with
the result of his labors at this time is made manifest
by the detailed inscription, ALBERTUS DURER
NORICUS FACIEBAT, on the tablet, followed by his
monogram and the date 1504. This plate proclaimed
him indisputably the greatest master of the
burin of his time; and along the lines which he laid
down for himself it remains unsurpassed until our
own day.
Adam and Eve is followed by a group of prints
which, though interesting in treatment and charming
in subject, such as the Nativity, Apollo and
Diana, and the first four plates of the Small Passion,
reveal nothing new in Dürer’s development as an
artist or a man. In the year 1510, however, is made
his first experiment in dry-point. Of the very small
plate of St. Veronica with the Sudarium two impressions
only have come down to us, neither of them
showing much burr. The Man of Sorrows, dated
1512, likewise must have been very delicately
scratched upon the copper, all existing impressions
being pale and delicate in tone. Whether
Dürer’s desire was to produce engravings which
should entail less labor and be more quickly
executed than was possible by the slower and more
laborious method of the burin, or whether, as seems
much more likely, he was influenced by an acquaintanceship
with the dry-point work of the
Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet, cannot be asserted
with any degree of assurance. Dürer’s third
dry-point, the St. Jerome by the Willow Tree (like
the Man of Sorrows dated 1512), is treated in so
much bolder and more painter-like a manner, is
so rich in burr and so satisfying as a composition,
that one can hardly account for such remarkable
development unaided by any outside influence or
stimulation. The British Museum’s impression of
the first state, before the monogram,—the richest
impression known—yields nothing in color effect
even to Rembrandt. Thausing is inclined to think
that Rembrandt must have been inspired by this
plate to himself take up the dry-point—an interesting
speculation and one which would do honor
to both of these great masters.
ALBRECHT DÜRER. ST. JEROME BY THE WILLOW TREE
(First State)
Size of the original dry-point 8⅛ × 7 inches
In the British Museum
ALBRECHT DÜRER. HOLY FAMILY
Size of the original dry-point, 8¼ × 7¼ inches
The Holy Family, though without monogram and
undated, belongs so unmistakably, from internal
evidence, to this period, that we may safely assign
it to the year 1512. The background and landscape
to the left are indicated in outline only. Did Dürer
intend to carry the plate further? We can never
know. It is his fourth and, unfortunately, his last
dry-point. There is a beauty in St. Jerome by the
Willow Tree and in this Holy Family which leads
us to read in these two masterpieces certain Italian
influences. There is the largeness of conception of
the Venetian School, and both St. Jerome and
St. Joseph show strong traces of such a master as
Giovanni Bellini.
With the brief space at our disposal, what shall
we say of the crowning works of those two wonderful
years, 1513-1514—Knight, Death and the Devil,
Melancholia, and St. Jerome in his Study? Are they
three of a proposed series of the four temperaments?
Should they be considered as parts of a group—or
is each masterpiece complete in itself? One thing
at least they have in common: they are truly
“Stimmungsbilder”—that is, the lighting is so arranged,
in each composition, as directly to affect
the mind and the mood of the beholder, and “the
sombre gloom of the Knight, Death and the Devil,
the weird, unearthly glitter of the Melancholia,
with its uncertain, glinting lights, the soft, tranquil
sunshine of the St. Jerome, are all in accordance
with their several subjects. These, whether or not
originally intended to represent ‘classes of men’ or
‘moods,’ certainly call up the latter in the mind of
the beholder—the steady courage of the valiant
fighter for the right, undismayed by darkness and
dangers; the brooding, leading well-nigh to despair,
over the vain efforts of human science to lift the
veil of the eternal secret; and the calm content of the
mind at peace with itself and the world around it.”[8]
Dürer, unfortunately, sheds no light upon the
inner and deeper meaning of the Knight, Death and
the Devil. He speaks of it simply as “A Horseman.”
The many and various titles invented for it since
his time carry us very little further forward than
where we began. The letter S, which precedes the
date, the dog which trots upon the further side of
the horse, even the blades of grass under the hoof
of the right hind leg of the horse, have all been
matters of speculation and controversy, and we
choose the part of wisdom if, disregarding the
swirling currents of metaphysical interpretation,
we enjoy this masterpiece of engraving for its
æsthetic content primarily, and for its potential
meanings afterwards.
ALBRECHT DÜRER. KNIGHT, DEATH AND THE DEVIL
Size of the original engraving, 9⅝ × 7⅜ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
ALBRECHT DÜRER. MELANCHOLIA
Size of the original engraving, 9⅛ × 7¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Melancholia favors an even wider range of speculation
than the Knight, Death and the Devil. This
woman, who wears a laurel wreath and who, seated
in gloomy meditation, supports her cheek in her
left hand, while all the materials for human labor,
for art, and for science lie scattered about her—does
she symbolize human Reason in despair at the
limits imposed upon her power? Or does the plate
have a more personal and intimate meaning, reflecting
Dürer’s deep grief at the death of his
mother—the mother to whom he so often refers in
his letters, always with heartfelt affection?
The so-called “magic square” lends color to the
latter interpretation. Dürer’s mother died on May
17, 1514. The figures in the diagonally opposite
corners of the square can be read as follows, 16 +
1 and 13 + 4, making 17, the day of the month;
as do the figures in the center read crosswise, 10
+ 7 and 11 + 6, and also the middle figures at
the sides read across, 5 + 12 and 8 + 9. The two
middle figures in the top line, 3 + 2, give 5, the
month in question, and the two middle figures in
the bottom line give the year, 1514.
Artistically the plate suffers from the multiplicity
of objects introduced, and the loving care which
Dürer has lavished upon them. He has wished to
tell his story—whatever it may be—with absolute
completeness in every particular, and in so doing
he has weakened and confused the effect of his
plate. It were idle to speculate upon what might
have happened had so sensitive a master as Martin
Schongauer possessed adequate technical skill for
the interpretation of such a subject. What a masterpiece
of masterpieces might have resulted if he
had subjected it to that process of simplification
and elimination of which he was so splendid an
exponent! However this may be, Melancholia has
been, and probably will continue to be, one of the
signal triumphs in the history of engraving. We
may never solve the riddles which she propounds;
but is she less fascinating for being only partially
understood?
St. Jerome in his Cell, all things considered, may
be accounted Dürer’s high-water mark. There is a
unity and harmony about this plate which is lacking
in Melancholia. Nothing could be finer than the
lighting; and, judged merely as a “picture,” it is
altogether satisfying from every point of view.
The accessories, even the animals in the foreground,
take their just places in the composition. It is
surprising that, although the plate is “finished”
with minute and loving care, there is not the faintest
evidence of labor apparent anywhere about it;
but this is only one of its many and superlative
merits. The light streaming in through the window
at the left and bathing in its soft effulgence the
Saint, intent upon his task, and the entire room in
which he sits, has been for centuries the admiration
of every art lover.
ALBRECHT DÜRER. ST. JEROME IN HIS CELL
Size of the original engraving, 9½ × 7¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
ALBRECHT DÜRER. VIRGIN SEATED BESIDE A WALL
Size of the original engraving, 5¾ × 3⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
To this year, 1514, also belongs the Virgin
Seated Beside a Wall, a plate in which the variety
of texture has been carried further than in any
other engraving by Dürer. The flesh is simply
treated, in line for the most part; but the undergarment,
the fur-trimmed wrapper, and the scarf
which covers the head of the Virgin, hanging down
the back and thrown over the knee, are all carefully
differentiated. Again, the various planes in
the landscape leading up to the fortified city are
beautifully handled, as is also the wall to the right.
It is hard to say what technical problems remained
for Dürer to solve after such a little masterpiece as
this.
His growing fame meanwhile had attracted the
attention of the Emperor Maximilian, “the last of
the Knights,” who in February, 1512, visited
Nuremberg. Dürer is commissioned to design the
Triumphal Arch, the Triumphal Car, and similar
monumental records of the Emperor’s prowess; not
to speak of such orders as the decoration of the
Emperor’s Prayer-Book, etc. Such distraction absorbed
the greater part of the artist’s time and
energies, and there was left little opportunity for
the development of his work along the lines he had
hitherto followed. It may be that we owe to this
fact, and to the quick mode of producing a print
such a process offers, the six etchings on iron which
bear dates from 1515 to 1518. But, whatever the
reason, we are glad that he etched these plates.
Discarding, for the moment, the elaborate and detailed
method of line work of his engravings on
copper, he adopts a more open system, such as
would “come well” in the biting—closer work than
in his woodcuts, but perfectly adapted to that
which he wished to say.
There is a tense and passionate quality in Christ
in the Garden which places this etched plate
among the noteworthy works even of Dürer,
while the wind-torn tree to the left of Christ gives
the needed touch of the supernatural to the composition.
The Carrying Off of Proserpine—the spirited
drawing for which is now in the J. Pierpont
Morgan collection—is the working out, with allegorical
accessories, of a study of a warrior carrying
off a woman. The last of his plates, the Cannon,
of 1518, with its charming landscape, was doubtless
executed to supply, promptly, a popular demand.
It represents a large field piece bearing the Arms of
Nuremberg, and the five strangely costumed men
to the right, gazing upon the “Nuremberg Field
Serpent,” obviously have some relation to the fear
of the Turk, then strong in Germany.
ALBRECHT DÜRER. CHRIST IN THE GARDEN
Size of the original etching, 8¾ × 6⅛ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
ALBRECHT DÜRER. ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM
Size of the original engraving, 9⅞ × 7⅝ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
In 1519 we have the first of Dürer’s engraved
portraits—Albert of Brandenburg, “The Little Cardinal”
to distinguish it from the larger plate of 1523.
Opinions as to Dürer’s importance as a portrait
engraver vary considerably. Some students feel
that in these later works the engraver has become
so engrossed in the delight of his craft that he has
failed to concentrate his attention upon the countenance
and character of the sitter, bestowing excessive
care upon the accessories and the minor
accidents of surface textures—wrinkles and similar
unimportant matters. On the other hand, such an
authority as Koehler maintains that the Albert of
Brandenburg, preeminent for delicacy and noble
simplicity among these portrait engravings by
Dürer, “will always be ranked among the best
portraits engraved anywhere and at any time.”
Frederic the Wise, Elector of Saxony, was one
of the earliest patrons of Dürer, founder of the
University of Wittenberg and a supporter of the
Reformation, although he never openly embraced
the doctrines of Martin Luther. Dürer’s drawing
in silver-point gives a straightforward and characterful
presentation of the man, and, in this instance,
translation into the terms of engraving has nowise
lessened the directness of appeal.
Erasmus of Rotterdam bears the latest date (1526)
which we find upon any engraving by Dürer, and it
well may be his last plate. Here the elaboration
and finish bestowed upon the accessories certainly
detract from the portrait interest. Erasmus was
polite enough, when he saw this engraving, to excuse
its unlikeness to himself by remarking that
doubtless he had changed much during the five
years which had intervened between Dürer’s
drawing of 1521 and the completion of the plate.
Technically, however, it is a masterpiece, a worthy
close to the career of undoubtedly the greatest
engraver Germany has produced.
GERMAN ENGRAVING: THE MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM
CABINET AND ALBRECHT DÜRER
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet (flourished c. 1467-c.
1500)
Zur Zeitbestimmung der Stiche des Hausbuch-meisters. By Curt
Glaser. Monatshefte für Kunstwissenschaft, Vol. 3, pp. 145-156. Leipzig.
1910.
The Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet. By Max Lehrs. 89 reproductions.
London. 1894. (International Chalcographical Society. 1893 and
1894.)
Bilder und Zeichnungen Vom Meister des Hausbuchs. By Max Lehrs.
5 illustrations. Jahrbuch der königlichen preussischen Kunstsammlungen,
Vol. 20, pp. 173-182. Berlin. 1899.
The Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet and Two New Works by His
Hand. By Willy F. Storck. 6 illustrations. The Burlington Magazine.
Vol. 18, pp. 184-192. London. 1910.
Dürer, Albrecht (1471-1528)
Le Peintre-Graveur. By Adam Bartsch. Volume 7, pp. 5-197. Albert
Durer, Vienna. 1803-1821.
Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer. By William Martin Conway. 14
illustrations. Cambridge: University Press. 1889.
The Engravings of Albrecht Dürer. By Lionel Cust. 4 reproductions
and 25 text illustrations. London: Seeley & Co. 1906. (The Portfolio Artistic
Monographs. No. 11.)
Albrecht Dürer; His Engravings and Woodcuts. Edited by Arthur
Mayger Hind. 65 reproductions. London and New York: Frederick A.
Stokes Company, n. d. (Great Engravers.)
Dürer. By H. Knackfuss. Translated by Campbell Dodgson. 134 illustrations.
Bielefeld and Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing. 1900. (Monographs on
Artists.)
Exhibition of Albert Dürer’s Engravings, Etchings and Dry-Points,
and of Most of the Woodcuts Executed from his Designs. (Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston. November 15, 1888-January 15, 1889.) By Sylvester R.
Koehler. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts. 1888.
Chronological Catalogue of the Engravings, Dry-Points and Etchings
Of Albert Dürer, as Exhibited at the Grolier Club. By Sylvester
R. Koehler. 9 reproductions on 7 plates. New York: The Grolier Club. 1897.
Dürer; des Meisters Gemälde, Kupferstiche und Holzschnitte. Edited
by Valentin Scherer. 473 reproductions. Stuttgart and Leipzig: Deutsche
Verlags-Anstalt. (Klassiker der Kunst. Vol. 4.)
Albert Dürer; His Life and Works. By William B. Scott. Illustrated.
London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1869.
Albrecht Dürer; Kupferstiche in getreuen Nachbildungen. Edited
by Jaro Springer. 70 plates. Munich: Holbein-Verlag. 1914.
Albert Dürer; His Life and Works. By Moritz Thausing. Translated
from the German. Edited by Frederick A. Eaton. 2 volumes. 58 illustrations.
London: John Murray. 1882.
Dürer Society. [Portfolios] With Introductory Notes by Campbell
Dodgson and Others. Series 1-10 (1898-1908). 311 reproductions. Index
of Series 1-10. London. 1898-1908.
———. Publication No. 12. 24 reproductions. London. 1911.
ITALIAN ENGRAVING: MANTEGNA TO MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI
ANDREA MANTEGNA is, both by his art and his
influence, the most significant figure in early
Italian engraving. His method or viewpoint is a
determining feature in much of the best work
which was produced during the last quarter of the
fifteenth century, until the influence of Raphael,
transmitted through Marcantonio, with a technical
mode based upon the manner of Albrecht Dürer,
completely changed the current of Italian engraving,
seducing it from what might have developed
into an original creative art, and condemned it to
perpetual servitude as the handmaid of painting.
Andrea Mantegna, born in 1431, at Vicenza, and
consequently Pollaiuolo’s senior by one year, was
adopted, at the age of ten, by Squarcione, in Padua.
Squarcione appears to have been less a painter
than a contractor, undertaking commissions to be
executed by artists in his employ. He was likewise
a dealer in antiquities, and in his shop the young
Mantegna must have met many of the leading
humanists who had made Padua famous as a seat
of classical learning. From them he drew in and
absorbed that passion for imperial Rome which
was to color his life and his art. His dream was of
forms more beautiful than those of everyday life,
built of some substance finer and less perishable
than the flesh of frail humanity; and as years went
by his work takes on, in increasing measure, a
grander and more majestic aspect. Fortunate for
us is it that in his mature period, when his style
was fully formed, he himself was impelled, by influences
of which later we shall speak, to take up
the graving tool and with it produce the seven imperishable
masterpieces which, beyond peradventure,
we may claim as his authentic work.
The Virgin and Child, the earliest of his engravings,
can hardly have been executed before
1475, and maybe not until after 1480, when Mantegna
had reached his fiftieth year. Mr. Hind
points out that there is a simplicity and directness
about it which recalls quite early work, similarly
conceived, such as the Adoration of the Kings of
1454; but the reasons which he advances are of
equal weight in assigning it to a later date, and I
am convinced that the intensity of mother-love expressed
in the poise and face of the Virgin betokens
a deeper feeling, a broader humanity, than one
normally would expect in a youth of twenty-three,
even though he be illumined with that flame of
genius which burned so brightly in Mantegna.
ANDREA MANTEGNA. VIRGIN AND CHILD
Size of the original engraving, 9¾ × 8⅛ inches
In the British Museum
ANDREA MANTEGNA. BATTLE OF THE SEA-GODS
Size of the original engraving, 11⅝ × 17 inches.
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
Technically, the plate plainly shows the hand of
an engraver not yet master of his medium. It is
marked with all the characteristics which we associate
with Mantegna’s work: the strong outline,
ploughed with repeated strokes of a rather blunt
instrument into a plate of unbeaten copper or some
yet softer metal; the diagonal shade lines widely
spaced; and the light strokes blending all into a
harmonious whole. In an impression of the first
state, in the British Museum, there is a tone, similar
to sulphur-tint, over portions of the plate,
noticeably in the faces of the mother and child.
How it was produced is still a matter of conjecture,
but that it adds much to the beauty of the print is
beyond question.
The Bacchanalian Group with Silenus and the
Bacchanalian Group with a Wine-Press (which,
like the Battle of the Sea-Gods, may be joined together
so as to form one long, horizontal composition)
show greater skill on the part of the engraver.
Mantegna’s increasing passion for the antique is
reflected in the standing figure to the left, who with
his left hand reaches up towards the wreath with
which he is about to be crowned, while resting his
right hand upon a horn of plenty. This figure is
obviously inspired by the Apollo Belvedere, while
the standing faun, at the extreme right, filled with
the sheer delight of mere animal existence, is a
delightful creation in Mantegna’s happiest mood.
The two plates of the Battle of the Sea-Gods may
be assigned, on technical grounds, to about the same
period as the two Bacchanals. The drawing which
Durer made of the right-hand portion, as also of the
Bacchanalian Group with Silenus, both dated 1494,
conclusively prove that these engravings antedate
the completion of the Triumph of Cæsar. Though
Mantegna borrowed his material from the antique,
he has so shaped it to his ends, so stamped upon it
the impress of his own personality, as to make of it
not an echo of classic art, but an original creation
of compelling force and charm. “These are not the
mighty gods of Olympus but the inferior deities of
Nature, of the Earth and the Sea, who acknowledge
none of the higher obligations and who display
unchecked their wanton elemental nature,
giving a loose rein to all the exuberance of their
joy in living.... These creatures of the sea
frolic about in the water, turbulent and wanton as
the waves.... The combat with those harmless-looking
weapons is probably not meant to be
in earnest; a vent for their superfluous energy is
all they seek.”[9]
To a somewhat later period belongs the Entombment.
There is nothing of the meek spirit of the
Redeemer in this passionate plate. The hard, lapidary
landscape is in accord with the figures, which
might, not unfittingly, find a place upon some triumphal
arch. Three crosses crown the distant hill.
At the right stands St. John, a magnificent figure,
giving utterance to his unspeakable grief, while the
Virgin, sinking in a swoon, is supported by one of
the holy women.
Here is none of that tenderness which we associate
with the divine tragedy, none of that grace
and beauty which inheres in the work of many of
the Italian painters of the Renaissance. All is stark
and harsh. It is not food for babes, but it is superb.
The Risen Christ Between Saints Andrew and
Longinus is Mantegna’s last engraving. Christ
towers above the two subsidiary figures, with a
form and bearing which would better befit a Roman
Emperor returning in triumph. In this plate, above
all others, Mantegna’s technique shines forth as
not only adequate, but as beyond question the
best—perhaps the only one—to convey his message.
Translated into another mode, one feels
that it would lose much of its appeal. It has been
suggested that the engraving was made as a project
for a group of statuary—perhaps for the high altar
of S. Andrea, in Mantua, raised above the most
precious relic possessed by the city, the Blood of
Christ, brought to Mantua by Longinus—a supposition
borne out by the statuesque impressiveness
of the group and by the fact that Christ gazes
downwards, as though from a height.
Although 1480 is the earliest date to which we
can assign the first of Mantegna’s original engravings,
there were in existence, at least five years
before that time, engravings by other hands after
designs by the master, and it may have been either
to protect himself from unauthorized and fraudulent
copyists, or as an artistic protest against the
incapacity of his translators, that Mantegna was
compelled to take up the graver. There has come
down to us a letter, dated September 15, 1475, addressed
by Simone di Ardizone, of Reggio, to the
Marquis Lodovico, of Mantua, complaining to the
prince of Mantegna’s behavior towards him. His
story was that “Mantegna, upon his arrival in
Mantua, made him splendid offers, and treated
him with great friendliness. Actuated by feelings
of compassion, however, towards his old friend,
Zoan Andrea, a painter in Mantua, from whom
prints (stampe), drawings, and medals had been
stolen, and wishing to help in the restoration of the
plates, he had worked with his friend for four
months. As soon as this came to Mantegna’s knowledge
he proceeded to threats, and one evening
Ardizone and Zoan Andrea had been assaulted by ten
or more armed men and left for dead in the square.”
ANDREA MANTEGNA. THE RISEN CHRIST BETWEEN
SAINTS ANDREW AND LONGINUS
Size of the original engraving, 15½ × 12¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
SCHOOL OF ANDREA MANTEGNA. ADORATION OF THE MAGI
Size of the original engraving, 15⅛ × 10¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The letter is “proof that, in Mantua, in the year
1475, two professional engravers, one of whom
clearly designates himself as such, were at work....
It is clear that Mantegna had a very special
interest in the engravings and drawings which
had been stolen from Zoan Andrea, and which
Ardizone, ‘out of compassion,’ helped to restore,
since he sought by force to impede the engraver’s
work. His anger can also be explained by the supposition
that Zoan Andrea’s engravings were facsimiles
of his own drawings which the former had
succeeded in obtaining possession of and had used
as designs for his engravings; and that being unable
to win Ardizone’s assistance in his work
Mantegna thought himself obliged to protest, by
violent means, against this infringement of his
artistic rights.”[10]
It is probable that to this drastic and effectual
method of protecting against piracy his own artistic
property we owe the two renderings, both incomplete,
of the Triumph of Cæsar. One may well be
the series upon which Zoan Andrea and Ardizone
were working when Mantegna brought their labors
to an untimely close; whereas the second series,
although authorized by Mantegna himself, may
have seemed to him, not without just cause, so to
misinterpret his original drawings as to impel him
to abandon the project and, in future, engrave his
own designs. The Triumph series naturally remained
incomplete, since, like every great artist,
Mantegna would hardly feel disposed to repeat, in
another medium, a subject which he had already
treated. Of the Triumph plates, the Elephants approximates
most closely Mantegna’s undoubted
work; but the drawing lacks distinction, and there
is a feeling of “tightness” throughout the whole
plate, which makes it impossible to attribute the
engraving to Mantegna’s own hand. The plate
which immediately follows—Soldiers Carrying Trophies—was
left unfinished. The subject is repeated
in the reverse sense and with the addition of a pilaster
to the right. This pilaster is probably Mantegna’s
original design for the upright members
dividing the nine portions of the painted Triumphs,
since the procession is supposed to pass upon the
further side of a row of columns, the figures and
animals being so arranged as to extend over one
picture to the next, with a sufficient space between
them for the introduction of the pilaster.
ZOAN ANDREA (?). FOUR WOMEN DANCING
Size of the original engraving, 8⅞ × 13 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
GIOVANNI ANTONIO DA BRESCIA. HOLY FAMILY WITH
SAINTS ELIZABETH AND JOHN
Size of original engraving, 11⅞ × 10⅛ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Adoration of the Magi, which for some reason
likewise remained unfinished, is taken directly from
the central portion of the triptych in the Uffizi.
The engraving, aside from its intrinsic beauty, is
of especial interest as affording an example of the
method adopted by Mantegna and his School. The
structural lines are deeply incised, in many cases by
repeated strokes of the graver. The diagonal shading
is then added and the plate carried forward and
completed, bit by bit. This engraving, at one time
accounted an original work by the master himself,
has received of recent years more than its merited
share of harsh criticism. It obviously falls far
short, in beauty, of Mantegna’s painting; but, for
all that, it preserves many of the essential qualities
of its immediate original, and one cannot but admire
the manner in which an engraver, certainly
not of the first rank, has captured the spirit of
humility and adoration, eloquent in every line of
the king at the left, humbly bending to receive the
benediction of the Christ Child.
By an engraver of the Mantegna School, perhaps
Zoan Andrea, working in Mantegna’s manner and
after his design for the Parnassus in the Louvre, is
Four Women Dancing—one of the most charming
and graceful prints of the period. It differs in many
particulars from the painting (assigned to the year
1497) and almost certainly translates Mantegna’s
drawing, rather than the painting itself.
To Giovanni Antonio da Brescia, of whose life,
apart from what we may learn from a study of his
work, we know substantially nothing, may be attributed
the Holy Family with Saints Elizabeth and
John, based upon a design by Mantegna, of about
1500, and probably engraved at a date prior to
Mantegna’s death, September 13, 1506. At a later
period, Giovanni came under the influence of
Marcantonio Raimondi, whose style he imperfectly
assimilated.
In the British Museum there is a unique impression
of a Profile Bust of a Young Woman, which
has been ascribed, with some show of reason, to
Leonardo da Vinci. Its intrinsic beauty might
lend some color to this attribution, were it not that,
even in its re-worked condition, the texture and flow
of the young woman’s abundant tresses, the treatment
of the flowing ribbons, and the delicate shading
in the face and upon the garment, betray the
hand of the trained engraver.
Nicoletto Rosex da Modena was working from
about 1490 to 1515. He engraved almost a hundred
plates, the majority of them being presumably
from his own designs, though in the Adoration of
the Shepherds the influence of Schongauer is markedly
apparent, and in Fortune and St. Sebastian the
inspiration of Mantegna is clearly to be seen.
SCHOOL OF LEONARDO DA VINCI. PROFILE BUST OF A
YOUNG WOMAN
Size of the original engraving, 4⅛ × 3 inches
In the British Museum
NICOLETTO ROSEX DA MODENA. ORPHEUS
Size of the original engraving, 9⅞ × 6¾ inches
In the British Museum
The group of trees in the Fate of the Evil Tongue
is borrowed from Dürer’s print of Hercules, while
the Turkish Family and the Four Naked Women—the
last-named being dated 1500—are copies of
Dürer’s engravings. Vedriani, writing of Nicoletto
as a painter, speaks of him as “chiefly distinguished
in perspective,” and among the most charming of
his plates in which this quality is seen is Orpheus.
The bare tree is suggestive of Martin Schongauer,
while the birds and beasts, including a dog, a peacock,
a weasel, a monkey playing with a tortoise,
a squirrel, a snake, a piping bird, two rabbits, a
fox, and a stag, not to speak of the ducks and
swans in the water, though not copied from northern
originals, have all the charm and life-like quality
which we find in the work of German engravers
such as The Master of St. John the Baptist and
The Master E. S. of 1466.
Concerning Jacopo de’ Barbari there is a wealth
of biographical material, in contrast with the meagerness
of our knowledge concerning the earlier
Italian engravers. Born at Venice, between 1440
and 1450, he is known to have worked between
1500 and 1508 for the Emperor and various other
princes in different towns of Germany. He was at
Nuremberg in 1505, and in 1510 he was in the
service of the Archduchess Margaret, Regent of the
Netherlands, while, in the inventory of the Regent’s
pictures of 1515-1516, he is referred to as dead.
Not one of the thirty engravings by Jacopo is
signed with his name, initials, or any form of monogram,
nor does any of them bear a date. His emblem
is the caduceus, which appears on the greater
number of his prints; and those upon which it is
lacking can readily be identified by his individual
style. This style undergoes certain modifications
with the passing years. In the early period, the
shading, for the most part, is in parallel lines, which
follow the contour of the figure, the figure itself
being long and sinuous. In his middle and later
period he indulged more freely in cross-hatching,
and the faces are modelled with greater delicacy.
Stress has been laid upon the influence exerted
by Jacopo upon Dürer’s engraving; but with the
exception of the Apollo and Diana this influence is
theoretical rather than artistic. Dürer, in one of
the manuscript sketches, dated 1523, for his book
The Theory of Human Proportions, writes: “Howbeit,
I can find none such who hath written aught
about how to form a canon of human proportion,
save one man—Jacopo by name, born at Venice,
and a charming painter. He showed me the figures
of a man and a woman, which he had drawn according
to a canon of proportions, so that, at that
time, I would rather have seen what he meant than
be shown a new kingdom.... Then, however,
I was still young and had not heard of such
things before. Howbeit, I was very fond of art, so
I set myself to discover how such a canon might be
wrought out.” Dürer undoubtedly refers to the
period of his first visit to Venice, and it is, accordingly,
in Dürer’s earliest plates that we see most
clearly the influence of the older master on his
technical method. Dürer soon outstripped Jacopo
in everything that pertains to the technical side of
engraving and worked out for himself a method
which, for his purpose, was substantially perfect.
JACOPO DE’ BARBARI. APOLLO AND DIANA
Size of the original engraving, 5¾ × 3⅞ inches.
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
JACOPO DE’ BARBARI. ST. CATHERINE
Size of the original engraving, 7⅛ × 4⅝ inches
In the British Museum
In such plates as Judith and St. Catherine, Jacopo’s
love for long, flowing lines finds its fullest
expression. There is a grace about these single
figures which is not without appealing charm,
though obviously they leave something to be desired
on the score of solidity and structure.
Girolamo Mocetto, born in Murano before
1458, was living at Venice in 1514, where he died
after 1531. According to Vasari, Mocetto was, at
some time, an assistant to Giovanni Bellini, whose
influence may be traced in his work. His engravings
are unpleasing in style and often clumsy in draughtsmanship.
He owes such merit as he may possess
to the originals which he interpreted. There is a
compelling power in Judith, after Mantegna’s design,
which atones for even so shapeless a member
as Judith’s right hand. The grandeur of the plate
is, however, derived from Mantegna. Mocetto has
done little more than traduce it; but, even so, the
engraving is noteworthy, inasmuch as it preserves
for us a noble composition, of which otherwise we
might remain in ignorance. The Baptism of Christ
is adapted, with some modifications, from Giovanni
Bellini’s painting executed between 1500 and 1510.
In the engraving, the landscape, which differs radically
from that in Bellini’s painting, may possibly
be original with Mocetto, though it recalls the work
of Cima, whose Baptism, in S. Giovanni in Bragora,
Venice, was painted in 1494.
Benedetto Montagna was, like Mocetto,
painter as well as engraver. His earliest engravings
are executed in a large, open manner, which can be
seen to advantage in the Sacrifice of Abraham. The
outline is strongly defined and the shading chiefly
in parallel lines. Where cross-hatching is used, it is
laid generally at right angles. Later, Montagna
modifies his style and adopts the finer system of
cross-hatching perfected by Dürer, whose influence,
especially in the backgrounds, is clearly to be
traced, and whose Nativity, of the year 1504, Montagna
copied in reverse. St. Jerome Beneath an
Arch of Rock belongs to this later period, and the
plate is probably based upon a painting by Bartolommeo
Montagna, the engraver’s father.
Giulio Campagnola, born at Padua about 1482,
is known to have been working in Venice in 1507
and is assumed to have died shortly after 1514.
According to contemporary accounts, he was a
youth of marvellously precocious and varied gifts
and promise. To his musical and literary accomplishments,
he added those of painter, miniaturist,
engraver, and sculptor.
GIULIO CAMPAGNOLA. CHRIST AND THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA
Size of the original engraving, 5⅛ × 7¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
GIULIO CAMPAGNOLA. GANYMEDE (First State)
Size of the original engraving, 6⅜ × 4⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
His engravings betray markedly the influence of
Giorgione, and his manner of engraving may have
been an attempt to imitate the rich softness of that
master’s painting. He worked out and perfected a
technical system all his own. In his earliest
manner he works in pure line, as in his copies of
Dürer’s engravings and in such plates as the Old
Shepherd and St. Jerome.
In the Young Shepherd, the Astrologer, and
Christ and the Woman of Samaria, the composition
is first engraved in simple, open lines, with little
cross-hatching. The plate is then carried forward
and completed by a system of delicate flicks, so
disposed as to produce a harmonious result, obliterating
substantially all trace of the preliminary
line work. In the third group, to which two prints
belong—Naked Woman Reclining and The Stag—no
lines at all are used, and the plate is carried out,
from first to last, in flick work.
Only one of Campagnola’s plates is dated—the
Astrologer, of 1509. In this he shows himself ripe,
both as artist and as craftsman. To an earlier
period would seem to belong the Ganymede, in
which the landscape is a faithful copy of Dürer’s
engraving of the Virgin and Child with a Monkey.
The place which, in the original engraving, was
occupied by the Virgin, is now filled by a clump of
trees.
St. John the Baptist is, all things considered,
Campagnola’s masterpiece. The figure is unquestionably
based upon a drawing by Mantegna, and
has all the largeness and grandeur of style which
characterizes the work of that master. The landscape
background may be original with the engraver
but it clearly shows the influence of Giorgione.
In this superb plate Campagnola’s method
of combining line work with delicate flick work can
be studied at its best. The Young Shepherd, known
in two states—the first in pure line, the second
completed with flick work—is as charming and
graceful as St. John the Baptist is monumental. It
justly deserves the reputation and popularity which
it enjoys among print lovers.
Christ and the Woman of Samaria is treated in a
more open manner than either of the two preceding
engravings. The beautiful landscape, as also the hill
to the left, is entirely in line, while the flick work
upon the figures and garments and, even more noticeably,
in the foreground to the right, is of a more
open character than that which appears in the
Young Shepherd. It may belong to the latter part
of Campagnola’s career as an engraver. There is an
amplitude in the design of the seated woman which
suggests Giorgione and Palma, though one cannot
definitely name any painting by either of these
masters from which Campagnola has borrowed his
figure.
GIULIO CAMPAGNOLA. ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST
Size of the original engraving, 13⅝ × 9½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
GIULIO AND DOMENICO CAMPAGNOLA. SHEPHERDS IN A LANDSCAPE
Size of the original engraving, 5¼ × 10⅛ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
The last of Campagnola’s plates, left unfinished
at his death and completed by Domenico Campagnola,
is Shepherds in a Landscape or, as it is sometimes
called, the Musical Shepherds. The original
drawing, in reverse, for the right-hand half of this
print is in the Louvre. It is unquestionably by
Giulio Campagnola; but, equally without question,
the left-hand portion of the engraving itself is by
Domenico. Whether Domenico was a close relative
or merely a pupil of Giulio’s has not been determined;
but the Shepherds in a Landscape conclusively
proves that he was at least the artistic heir
of the older master. Domenico’s style is in marked
contrast to that of Giulio. Flick work is almost
absent from his engravings, which are executed in
rather open lines, more in the mode of an etcher
than of an engraver working according to established
tradition. The skies, in particular, have a
romantic quality which is all their own, and which
can be seen to advantage in the Shepherd and the
Old Warrior, dated 1517.
Marcantonio Raimondi, born in Bologna about
1480, for over three centuries enjoyed a reputation
eclipsing that of any other Italian master. Of recent
years, however, upon insufficient grounds, he
has been somewhat pushed aside and belittled as a
“reproductive engraver,” his critics wilfully forgetting
the fact that, with the exception of Pollaiuolo
and Mantegna, the Italian School is, in the
main, derivative, and cannot boast of any original
engravers of world-wide fame, such as Schongauer
or Dürer. But Marcantonio was far from being a
mere translator of alien works. “He is like some
great composer who borrows another’s theme only
to make it his own by the originality of his setting.”[11]
The earliest influence which we may trace in
Marcantonio’s work is that of the famous goldsmith
and painter, Francesco Francia, with whom Marcantonio
served his apprenticeship. Certain nielli,
among them Pyramus and Thisbe and Arion on the
Dolphin, have been assigned to the young Marcantonio
and attributed to this period of his life.
St. George and the Dragon is strongly reminiscent
of the niello technique, with its dark shadows,
against which the figures stand out in relief. The
landscape is clearly borrowed or adapted from engravings
in Dürer’s earlier period, the trees at the
left, in particular, recalling the Hercules.
MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI. ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON
Size of the original engraving, 11⅞ × 8¾ inches
In the British Museum
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI. BATHERS
Size of the original engraving, 11¼ × 9 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI. ST. CECILIA
Size of the original engraving, 10¼ × 6⅛ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI. DEATH OF LUCRETIA
Size of the original engraving, 8½ × 5¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
To this early period likewise belongs Pyramus
and Thisbe, which bears the earliest date—1505—which
we find upon any of his engravings. It may
well have been executed during his residence in
Venice, between 1505 and 1509.
The Bathers, of 1510, is an artistic record of
Marcantonio’s visit to Florence, on his way to
Rome. The figures are taken from Michelangelo’s
cartoon of the Battle of Pisa; but the landscape,
including the thatched barn to the right, is a faithful
copy, in reverse, of Lucas van Leyden’s plate of
Mahomet and the Monk Sergius; for Marcantonio,
like all great artists, freely borrowed his material
wherever he found it, shaping it to his own ends.
According to Vasari, it was the Death of Lucretia,
engraved shortly after Marcantonio’s arrival in
Rome, about 1510, after a drawing by Raphael,
which attracted the attention of that master and
showed him how much he might benefit by the
reproduction of his work. One would be inclined
to think that the Death of Dido rather than the
Death of Lucretia might have been the means of
bringing about this artistic collaboration; for, if
Vasari is correct, the immediate result of Raphael’s
personal influence upon Marcantonio was harmful
rather than helpful, the Lucretia by general consent
being the finer plate of the two.
It is significant that none of Marcantonio’s
engravings interprets any existing painting by
Raphael. We may infer that the engraver worked
entirely after drawings supplied to him by Raphael—either
drawings made for the purpose of being
interpreted in terms of engraving, or the original
studies for paintings, which, in their elaboration,
were subjected to many modifications and changes.
Among his most interesting engravings are
Saint Cecilia, which may be compared, or rather
contrasted, with the famous painting in Bologna;
the Virgin and Child in the Clouds, which later appears
as the Madonna di Foligno; and Poetry, based
on a study by Raphael for the fresco in the Camera
della Segnatura, in the Vatican.
The Massacre of the Innocents, usually accounted
the engraver’s masterpiece, is one of several subjects
of which two plates exist. Authorities disagree
as to which is the “original,” but some familiarity
with both versions leads one to think that Marcantonio
may well have been his own interpreter. At
least one cannot name certainly any other engraver
capable of producing either of the two
versions of the Massacre of the Innocents, in point
of drawing or of technique.
Among Marcantonio’s portrait plates one of the
most attractive is that of Philotheo Achillini (“The
Guitar Player”), which is in his early manner and
probably dates from his Bolognese period. It may
be based upon a drawing by Francia, but the trees
and distant landscape all show markedly the influence
of Dürer.
MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI. PHILOTHEO ACHILLINI
(“The Guitar Player”)
Size of the original engraving, 7¼ × 5¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI. PIETRO ARETINO
Size of the original engraving, 7⅜ × 5⅞ inches
In the British Museum
To a much later period, and engraved in Marcantonio’s
most mature manner, belongs the portrait
of Pietro Aretino. Vasari refers to this plate as
“engraved from life,” but its richness and color
would seem to point to an original by Titian or
Sebastiano del Piombo.
After the death of Raphael, in 1520, Marcantonio’s
engraving undergoes a change—a change for
the worse, as might be expected, since a number of
his plates are interpretations of designs by Giulio
Romano. There is less care in the drawing, less
delicacy in the management of the burin, and,
although we may pity him for the loss of all that
he possessed at the sack of Rome, in 1527, we cannot
greatly regret that, as an engraver, Marcantonio’s
active life terminates with that date.
ITALIAN ENGRAVING: MANTEGNA TO
MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mantegna, Andrea (1431-1506)
Dürer and Mantegna. By Sidney Colvin. 5 illustrations. The Portfolio,
Vol. 8, pp. 54-63. London. 1877.
Andrea Mantegna and the Italian Pre-Raphaelite Engravers. Edited
by Arthur Mayger Hind. 75 reproductions. London and New York: Frederick
A. Stokes Company, n. d. (Great Engravers.)
Andrea Mantegna. By Paul Kristeller. 26 plates and 162 text illustrations.
London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1901. Chapter XI, Mantegna as Engraver.
Mantegna. By H. Thode. 105 illustrations. Bielefeld and Leipzig: Velhagen
& Klasing. 1897. (Künstler Monographien. 27.)
Barbari, Jacopo de’ (c. 1440-c. 1515)
Engravings and Woodcuts by Jacopo de’ Barbari. Edited by Paul Kristeller.
33 reproductions and 2 text illustrations. London. 1896. (International
Chalcographical Society, 1896.)
Lorenzo Lotto. By Bernhard Berenson. 30 plates. New York: Putnam’s
Sons. 1895. pp. 34-50.
Campagnola, Giulio (c. 1482-c. 1514)
Giulio Campagnola; Kupferstiche und Zeichnungen. Edited by Paul
Kristeller. 27 reproductions. Berlin: Bruno Cassirer. 1907. (Graphische
Gesellschaft. Publication 5.)
Marcantonio Raimondi (c. 1480-c. 1530)
Marc-Antoine Raimondi; étude historique et critique suivie d’un
catalogue raisonné des oeuvres du maitre. By Henri Delaborde. 63 illustrations.
Paris: Librairie de l’art. 1888.
Marcantonio Raimondi. By Arthur Mayger Hind. 22 illustrations. The
Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 243-276. Boston. 1913.
Marcantonio and Italian Engravers and Etchers of the Sixteenth
Century. Edited by Arthur Mayger Hind. 65 reproductions. London and
New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company. n. d. (Great Engravers.)
SOME MASTERS OF PORTRAITURE
YOU will all remember how John Evelyn, writing
to Samuel Pepys, advised him to collect
engraved portraits—since, in his own words, “Some
are so well done to the life, that they may stand
comparison with the best paintings.” He then adds:
“This were a cheaper, and so much a more useful,
curiosity, as they seldom are without their names,
ages and eulogies of the persons whose portraits
they represent. I say you will be exceedingly
pleased to contemplate the effigies of those who
have made such a noise and bustle in the world;
either by their madness and folly; or a more conspicuous
figure, by their wit and learning. They
will greatly refresh you in your study and by your
fireside, when you are many years returned.” We
know by his “Diary” that Pepys became an enthusiastic
collector and that he went over to Paris
to buy many of Robert Nanteuil’s engraved portraits—at
a later date commissioning his wife to
secure for him many more, which he strongly
desired.
From the time of Evelyn and Pepys in England,
and that prince of print-collectors in France, the
Abbé de Marolles—who in 1666 could boast of
possessing over 123,000 prints, “and all the portraits
extant”—portraits have had, for the student,
a peculiar fascination, and it may be interesting to
consider briefly the work of some six or eight of the
acknowledged masters of the art.
Aside from two unimportant plates by the Master
of the Amsterdam Cabinet, which may, or may
not, be portraits, the earliest engraver to address
himself to portraiture, pure and simple, is the
anonymous German master with the monogram
. So far as we know, he executed four
plates only (c. 1480-1485). In them the characterization
is strong, the drawing clear and vigorous.
The artist’s technique may have owed something to
Martin Schongauer, but it is singularly lacking in
the refinement and balance which mark the work
of that engraver.
Daniel Hopfer, who, in 1493, was already working
in Augsburg, has left us an etching, which certainly
cannot be later than 1504, and may have
been executed five, or even ten, years earlier. It
is a portrait of Kunz von der Rosen, the Jester-Adviser
of the Emperor Maximilian I. The etching
is upon iron, and the quality of the line is well
adapted to the rugged character of the personage.
This plate was copied, in reverse, with some modifications,
by an anonymous North Italian engraver
and reappears as Gonsalvo of Cordova, who was in
Italy, in command of the army of Ferdinand V
of Castile, between 1494 and 1504, when Ferdinand’s
jealousy caused him to be superseded in
the Vice Royalty of Naples.
MASTER . HEAD OF A YOUNG WOMAN
Size of the original engraving, 4¾ × 3⅜ inches
In the Royal Print Room, Berlin
ALBRECHT DÜRER. ALBERT OF BRANDENBURG
Size of the original engraving, 5¾ × 3⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The earliest in date of Dürer’s engraved portraits
is likewise the best. Albert of Brandenburg
was twenty-nine years of age, in 1519, when Dürer
engraved this plate. There is a concentration upon
the purely portrait element lacking in some of the
later prints. The burin work is singularly delicate
and beautiful. Indeed, nothing better, from a technical
standpoint, has ever been done on copper than
Dürer’s six portrait plates; and if he at times succumbs
to the temptation of rendering each minor
detail with the same loving care which he bestows
upon the face itself, he remains, notwithstanding,
one of the greatest masters of the burin the world
has seen.
Dürer engraved a second plate of Albert of Brandenburg,
in 1523. The intervening four years had
left their mark upon the Cardinal, and neither as
a portrait nor as an engraving is it as pleasing as
the earlier one. In the following year, 1524, there
are two portraits—Frederic the Wise, Elector of
Saxony and Wilibald Pirkheimer. The former was
one of the earliest patrons of Dürer and likewise
one of the most liberal-minded princes of his time.
The plate is executed in Dürer’s painstaking and
careful manner, nor does it lack, as a portrait,
the directness and immediacy of appeal of the
silver-point drawing, which may have served as
its original. Wilibald Pirkheimer, the celebrated
patrician and humanist, was Dürer’s life-long
and most intimate friend, and it is to him that
Dürer’s letters from Venice were addressed.
Philip Melanchthon is the simplest in treatment
and the most satisfying, in its elimination of unnecessary
detail, of Dürer’s portrait engravings,
and is the best likeness of the mild reformer. The
inscription reads: “Dürer could depict the features
of the living Philip, but the skilled hand could not
depict his mind.” Here Dürer does himself less
than justice, for it is the portrait-like character
which makes this engraving still noteworthy after
the lapse of four centuries.
To the same year, 1526, belongs Erasmus of
Rotterdam. It is a technical masterpiece. Dürer
has lavished all his skill upon this plate. It is
magnificent; but from a purely portrait standpoint,
it is a magnificent failure.
ALBRECHT DÜRER. PHILIP MELANCHTHON
Size of the original engraving, 6⅞ × 5 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
ANTHONY VAN DYCK. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF (First State)
Size of the original etching, 9½ × 6⅛ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
For a full hundred years we have no portraits of
note; then there enters upon the scene one of the
great princes of the art—Van Dyck—whose etched
portraits vie with those of Rembrandt in vitality,
and surpass them in immediacy of appeal. Van
Dyck had not that deep humanity, that profound
reading of human character, which raises Rembrandt
above all rivals; but upon the purely technical
side, working within the truest traditions of
etching, with due regard to its possibilities and its
limitations, Van Dyck may claim precedence. His
fifteen original portrait etchings (together with
Erasmus of Rotterdam, after Holbein) undoubtedly
belong to the period between his return from Italy
to Antwerp, in 1626, and his settlement in London,
in 1632. From the very first, Van Dyck seems to
have been in possession of all his powers. His etchings
show various modes of treatment, according to
the character of the sitter, and it would be difficult
to speak of the development of his art, since, by the
grace of God, he seems to have been a born etcher.
Van Dyck’s Portrait of Himself naturally interests
us most, on account of its subject. So far as
Van Dyck has seen fit to carry it, it is a perfect
work of art, not the least remarkable feature being
the splendid placing of the head upon the plate.
Unfortunately, the first state is of such excessive
rarity that the majority of print students can know
this superb portrait only through reproductions (in
which much of its delicacy is necessarily lost) or,
in the later state, where the plate is finished with
the graver by Jacob Neefs—a distressing piece of
work, strangely enough, countenanced by Van
Dyck himself; since in the British Museum there
is a touched counter-proof of the first state, which
proves that Van Dyck directed the elaboration of
the plate, no doubt with the intention of using it
as a title page to the Iconography, a series of a
hundred engraved portraits of his friends and contemporaries.
Of even subtler beauty is Snyders, unfortunately—like
the portrait of Van Dyck himself—of the
greatest rarity and also, like that plate, finished
with the graver by Jacob Neefs. It is perfectly
satisfying from every point of view, combining, as
it does, the greatest freedom with absolute certainty
of hand. The treatment of the face shows a
thorough knowledge of all the technical resources
of the art, the high lights having been “stopped
out” exactly where needed, the etched dots and
lines melting into a perfect harmony.
In marked contrast to the delicacy of Snyders
is the bolder and more rugged treatment of Jan
Snellinx. Fortunately, the plate has remained, until
our own day, in essentially the same condition
as when it left Van Dyck’s hands, and we can better
realize what an artistic treasure-house the Iconography
might have been, had the public possessed
the intelligence to appreciate, at their true worth,
these fine flowerings of Van Dyck’s genius, instead
of demanding, as they did, that a plate be absolutely
“finished” to the four corners by the professional
engraver.
ANTHONY VAN DYCK. FRANS SNYDERS (First State)
Size of the original etching, 9⅛ × 6⅛ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
ANTHONY VAN DYCK. LUCAS VORSTERMAN (First State)
Size of the original engraving, 9⅝ × 6⅛ inches
In the Collection of Charles C. Walker, Esq.
Lucas Vorsterman is, in some ways, the most
purely pictorial of Van Dyck’s portrait etchings.
Even the taste of the time demanded no further
elaboration than an engraved background, which,
judiciously added, left undisturbed Van Dyck’s
original work.
It would be interesting to know whether Rembrandt
was acquainted with the etched work of
Van Dyck. If so, it is all the more astounding that
his work should betray no trace of any outside influence.
Rembrandt’s earliest dated etching is also, seemingly,
his first etching—a Portrait of His Mother, of
the year 1628—an unsurpassed little masterpiece.
In its own mode of simple, direct, open, linear
treatment, there is nothing finer, even in the work
of Rembrandt himself. Saskia with Pearls in Her
Hair, of 1634, as also the Young Man in a Velvet
Cap with Books Beside Him, which belongs to the
year 1637, are in Rembrandt’s best manner, but
the crowning triumph of this period is unquestionably
Rembrandt Leaning on a Stone Sill, bearing the
date 1639 and showing Rembrandt at the happiest
period of his life—successful, prosperous, and perfect
master of his medium.
The portrait of an Old Man in a Divided Fur
Cap, of the following year, is likewise admirable—not
a line too much and every line full of significance.
Jan Cornelis Sylvius, of 1646, shows in a
marked degree Rembrandt’s sympathy with, and
appreciation of the beauty of old age. The face is
treated in a delicate and sensitive manner, and,
with the fewest possible strokes, Rembrandt has
indicated the texture and growth of the sparse
beard of his aged sitter. Sulphur-tint has been used
to give additional modelling to the face, while the
background and costume are finished in a way
which would have won the admiration of Dürer
himself. Ephraim Bonus, Jan Asselyn, and Jan Six
are Rembrandt’s three portrait etchings for the
year 1647. Jan Six is Rembrandt’s masterpiece, so
far as elaborate finish is concerned. He has availed
himself of all the resources of etching, dry-point,
and of the burin—used freely as an etcher may use
it—to carry forward this plate. The center of the
room is bathed in subdued light, which melts into
rich and mysterious shadows in the corners.
REMBRANDT. JAN CORNELIS SYLVIUS
Size of the original etching, 10⅞ × 7½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
REMBRANDT. REMBRANDT LEANING ON A STONE SILL
Size of the original etching, 8⅛ × 6½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
REMBRANDT. CLEMENT DE JONGHE (First State)
Size of the original etching, 8⅛ × 6⅜ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
REMBRANDT. JAN LUTMA (First State)
Size of the original etching, 7⅞ × 5⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Rembrandt Drawing at a Window is one of the
most characterful of his portraits. It shows him at
the age of forty-two. Years of sorrow have left
their mark upon his countenance, but what a
strong, resolute face it is! Clement de Jonghe (which
should be seen in the first state before the expression
of the face was entirely changed) is executed
in Rembrandt’s open, linear manner, without
strong contrasts of light and dark. For beauty of
drawing and subtlety of observation, it is one of
his finest plates. Old Haaring, of 1655, is a magnificent
dry-point, in which Rembrandt has built up,
with many lines, a completely harmonious picture;
but for grip of character and straightforward presentation
of the personality of his sitter, it must
yield precedence to the unsurpassed Jan Lutma, of
the following year. This portrait, in the first state,
before the introduction of the window in the background,
is one of Rembrandt’s most mature works,
in that the method is perfectly adapted to the result
desired.
In France there is little of significance in portrait
engraving during the sixteenth century. Thomas
de Leu and Léonard Gaultier based their style
upon the miniature portrait engravers of the Northern
School, such as the Wierix. Although their
graver work is often quite beautiful, it lacks originality,
and when, as frequently happened, they
endeavored to interpret the wonderful drawings of
the Clouets or Dumonstier, they signally failed in
capturing the charm of their originals.
Claude Mellan, who was born at Abbeville in
1598, is, in a sense, the fountain-head of French
portrait engraving. His work is characteristically
French, in that it is the result of a system carefully
worked out to its logical conclusion. In his desire
to keep strictly within the limits of what he considered
to be the proper province of engraving, he
carried his insistence upon line to a point which
borders on mannerism and which, for over two
centuries, has militated against his full recognition.
Mellan’s earliest engravings recall the work of
Léonard Gaultier, but his first teacher is not known.
Dissatisfied with his instruction in Paris, in 1624
he went to Rome where, while studying engraving
under Villamena, he came under the influence of
the French painter, Simon Vouet, who not only
provided his protégé with drawings to engrave, but
persuaded him to base all his training upon a
thorough ground-work of drawing. It is this severe
training as a draughtsman which lies at the foundation
of Mellan’s style. His original drawings
were executed in pencil, silver-point, or chalk, and
in his engravings he preserves all the delicate and
elusive charm of his originals.
CLAUDE MELLAN. VIRGINIA DA VEZZO
Size of the original engraving, 4½ × 3 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
CLAUDE MELLAN. FABRI DE PEIRESC
Size of the original engraving, 8⅜ × 5⅝ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
His manner of engraving is peculiar to himself.
The inventor of a mode, he so uses it as to exhaust
its possibilities and leaves nothing for his successors
to do along similar lines. Consequently, although
his influence on French portrait engraving
was great and far-reaching, he cannot, in any true
sense, be considered as the founder of a “school.”
Even in his early portrait plates (incidentally,
among the most charming and perfect), such as
Virginia de Vezzo, the wife of Simon Vouet, engraved
in Rome in 1626, we find his style fully
developed. Save for four little spots of deepest
shadow, the entire portrait is executed in single,
uncrossed lines, indicating, by their direction, the
contour of the face, which is delicately modelled,
while the flow of the hair is realistically and beautifully
expressed. From this simple, linear method,
adopted thus early, Mellan, with few unimportant
exceptions, never departed; and although he lived
and worked until 1688, surviving Morin by twenty-two
years and Robert Nanteuil by ten, he held
to his own self-appointed course, his work showing
no trace whatever of the influence of his two
most distinguished contemporaries.
Among his many portraits choice is difficult, but,
by general consent, his style is seen at its very best
in Fabri de Peiresc, which excels in point of drawing,
grip of character, and straightforwardness of presentation.
It is dated 1637 and was engraved on his
way from Rome to Paris, in which city he settled,
enjoying for many years a reputation and success
second to none. Of his other portraits mention
must be made of Henriette-Marie de Buade Frontenac,
of a delightful silvery quality, and of her
husband, Henri-Louis Habert de Montmor, the richest
toned of all his works. Nicolas Fouquet likewise
is of peculiar interest, inasmuch as in this plate
Mellan has departed for once from his invariable
method of pure line work and has modelled the
face with an elaborate system of dots, in the
manner of Morin.
Jean Morin was Mellan’s junior by two years.
His style is in the greatest contrast to that of the
older master, not only technically, but in that he
was always a reproductive engraver, never designing
his own portraits, the majority of his plates being
after the paintings of Philippe de Champaigne. His
plates are executed almost entirely in pure etching,
with just sufficient burin work to give crispness and
decision. The heads are elaborately modelled, with
many minute dots, recalling somewhat Van Dyck’s
manner in such a portrait as Snyders.
Antoine Vitré, the famous printer, shows Morin’s
method at its richest; its brilliancy and color place
it in the forefront of French portraits, though for
charm it may not rank with Anne of Austria or
Cardinal Richelieu, both after paintings by Philippe
de Champaigne.
Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio, after Van Dyck, well
deserves the reputation which it has so long enjoyed.
It is, furthermore, significant as an example
of Morin’s power of concentrating all the attention
upon the countenance of his sitter. He was primarily
a portrait engraver and never allowed himself
to be seduced, as were such eighteenth century
masters as the Drevets, into lavishing his skill upon
the purely ornamental accessories, to the detriment
of the portrait itself. Fine though Van Dyck’s full-length
painting is, Morin is more than justified in
taking from it the head and bust only, since thereby
he gives to his plate a vivid and compelling quality
which otherwise would be lacking.
JEAN MORIN. CARDINAL GUIDO BENTIVOGLIO
Size of the original engraving, 11½ × 9¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
ROBERT NANTEUIL. POMPONE DE BELLIÈVRE
Size of the original engraving, 12⅞ × 9⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Robert Nanteuil is not only the greatest of
French portrait engravers; he is one of the greatest
portraitists in the history of French art. In his work
the clarity and logic of the French temperament is
enriched by a study of the engravers of the Flemish
and Dutch schools, though in Nanteuil’s plates
color is never sought at the expense of balance. His
technique is a fusion of the best elements of Mellan
and of Morin. From Mellan he derived his carefully
balanced system of open line work, while
Morin doubtless suggested to him the use of graver
flicks in modelling the face.
The date of Nanteuil’s birth is variously given
as 1623, 1625, and 1630, the last-named date, which
is accepted by Robert-Dumesnil, corresponding
best with what we know regarding the development
of his work.
His first portrait plates were done in 1648, the
year in which he came to Paris, and from that time
onwards he devoted himself almost exclusively to
portraiture, until his death in 1678. His engravings
form a gallery illustrating the reign of Louis XIV,
from the King himself, whom he engraved no fewer
than eleven times, to the Norman peasant and
poet, Loret (incidentally, one of Nanteuil’s finest
portrait plates), whose “Gazette” satirized each
day “the intriguing nobles who were not afraid of
bullets, but who were in deadly fear of winter mud.”
An interesting story is told of Nanteuil’s début
in Paris. It is said that he received his first order
by following some divinity students to a wine-shop,
where they were wont to take their meals. There,
having chosen one of the portrait drawings he had
brought from Rheims, he pretended to look for a
sitter whose name and address he had forgotten. It
is superfluous to add that the picture was not
recognized, but it was passed from hand to hand,
the price was asked, the artist was modest in his
demands, and before the end of the repast his
career had begun.
One of the most interesting portraits, in his early
manner, is that of Cardinal de Retz, engraved in
1650. Morin has likewise left us a portrait of this
personage, and it is instructive to compare the two
engravings. In Nanteuil’s the background is still
somewhat stiff, but the costume is treated simply
and directly, while the face shows a judicious
blending of line and dot work.
Nothing could be finer and more reticent than
Marie de Bragelogne of 1656. The pale, elderly, and
somewhat sad face of this old love of Cardinal
Richelieu is treated with the greatest sympathy.
For the most part, it is modelled with delicate
flick work, and where lines are employed, they are
so used as to blend perfectly into a harmonious
whole. In contrast to the face, the collar is rendered
in long, flowing lines, without cross-hatching,
entirely in the manner of Claude Mellan. It is
from Nanteuil’s own drawing from life and is
perhaps the most beautiful of the eight engraved
portraits of women we have from his hand.
Pompone de Bellièvre, of 1657, after Le Brun’s
painting, has enjoyed among collectors the reputation
of being the most beautiful of all engraved
portraits. Fine it undoubtedly is; but it lacks that
grip of character which is so conspicuously present
in Nanteuil’s engravings from life, and for compelling
portrait quality it falls short of Pierre Seguier,
engraved in the same year, likewise after Le Brun’s
painting. Jean Loret certainly does not owe its fame
to the beauty of the personage portrayed. It is one
of Nanteuil’s most convincing and vital plates.
The modelling of the face and the means employed
are absolutely adequate. This engraving alone
would explain why, in his day, Nanteuil’s greatest
fame rested upon the surprisingly life-like quality
of his work, whether it be pastel, drawing, or engraving.
To the year 1658 also belongs Basile Fouquet,
brother of Nicolas Fouquet, the famous Superintendent
of Finance. Not less beautiful than Pompone
de Bellièvre, there is a vitality about the
Basile Fouquet lacking in the better-known plate.
Three years later, in 1661, Nanteuil engraved the
portrait of Nicolas Fouquet—one of his masterpieces
of characterization. Nothing could be finer
than the way in which he has portrayed the great
finance minister, whose ambition it was to succeed
Mazarin as virtual ruler of the kingdom. It is a
historical document of prime importance, of the
greatest beauty, and preserves for all time the
features of the then most powerful man in France,
gazing out upon the world with a half quizzical
expression, totally unaware of the sensational reversal
of Fortune already drawing near.
A plate not less admirable in its way—a little
masterpiece—is François de la Mothe le Vayer, who
was regarded as the Plutarch of his time for his
boundless erudition and his mode of reasoning.
Nanteuil’s engraving shows him at the age of
seventy-five, in full possession of all his intellectual
powers and in the enjoyment of that good health
which lasted until his death, eleven years later, at
the ripe age of eighty-six.
ROBERT NANTEUIL. BASILE FOUQUET
Size of the original engraving, 12⅞ × 9⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
ROBERT NANTEUIL. JEAN LORET
Size of the original engraving, 10⅛ × 7⅛ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The masterly portrait of Turenne, engraved in
1663, after a painting by Philippe de Champaigne,
is one of the engraver’s most vigorous plates, of a
size somewhat larger than had hitherto been his
wont. From this period date the life-size portraits,
thirty-six of which were completed before he died
in 1678, the last four years of his life being devoted
entirely to these large plates—seven of them of the
King himself. They were obviously intended to be
framed and hung above the high wainscots used
in those times, and although they do not show
Nanteuil at his best, and—in the majority of cases—are,
in part, the work of assistants, they are a
remarkable performance.
Nanteuil established the tradition of portrait
engraving in France once and for all, and although
his successors, profiting by his example, have left
us many superbly engraved plates, none of them
were able to combine the qualities of great engraver
with great portraitist, which make Nanteuil supreme
in the history of portrait engraving.
The nineteenth century has produced three master
portrait etchers. Of what previous century can
we say as much? Other portraits may possess more
charm, but none have a greater measure of dignity
than those by Alphonse Legros. He has been
called a “belated old master,” and in his portrait
plates are combined the qualities which prove him
to be a master indeed—not old, in the sense of out of
touch with his time, but displaying the same qualities
which make the portraits of Rembrandt or Van
Dyck so compelling and of such continuing interest.
Cardinal Manning—the triumph of spirit over
flesh—simple, austere; G. F. Watts, in which the
gravity and beauty of old age is portrayed as no one
since Rembrandt has portrayed it, are plates which
will assure his artistic immortality.
Mr. Whistler, when asked which of his etchings
he considered the best, is reported to have answered,
“All.” Fortunately for us, in the case of
his portraits he has indicated his preference. “One
of my very best” is written beneath a proof of Annie
Haden, now in the Lenox Library; and Whistler,
in the course of conversation with Mr. E. G. Kennedy,
told him that if he had to make a decision as
to which plate was his best, he would rest his reputation
upon Annie Haden. It is the culmination
of that wonderful series to which belong such
masterpieces as Becquet, Drouet, Finette, Arthur
Haden, Mr. Mann and Riault, the Engraver. Whistler
himself never surpassed this portrait, which for
perfect balance, certainty of hand, and sheer charm,
is not only one of the most delightful portrait plates
in the history of the art, but one of the few successful
representations of the elusive charm of young
girlhood.
J. A. McN. WHISTLER. ANNIE HADEN
Size of the original dry-point, 13⅞ × 8⅜ inches
In the Collection of Howard Mansfield, Esq.
J. A. McN. WHISTLER. RIAULT, THE ENGRAVER
Size of the original dry-point, 8⅞ × 5⅞ inches
In the Collection of Howard Mansfield, Esq.
Hardly less beautiful are the portraits of Florence
Leyland, standing, holding her hoop in her right
hand, every line of the slender figure rhythmic and
beautiful; or of Fanny Leyland, seated, the soft
flounces of her white muslin dress indicated with
the fewest and most delicate lines; or Weary, lying
back in her chair, with hair outspread. Weary suggests
the Jenny of Rossetti’s poem, but it is a
portrait of “Jo”—Joanna Heffernan—whom
Whistler painted as The White Girl and La Belle
Irlandaise, and of whom, in 1861, two years previously,
he had made a superb dry-point.
Of Whistler’s portraits of men, Riault is assuredly
one of the finest, both in execution and in
portrayal of character. The concentration of the
wood-engraver on his task is expressed with convincing
power, and those who mistakenly attribute
to Whistler grace at the expense of strength could
hardly do better than study this dry-point.
Could there be a greater contrast than the work
of Whistler and Zorn? Could anything better
illustrate the infinite possibilities of the art, the
pliability of the medium to serve the needs of
etchers as dissimilar in method as in point of
attack? With the fewest possible lines (slashed,
one might almost say, into the copper) Zorn
evolves a portrait of compelling power, vibrant with
life. Mere speed counts for little, and it is of small
significance that a masterpiece such as Ernest Renan
is the result of a single sitting of one hour only. It
was done in Renan’s studio in Paris, in April, 1892.
“His friends,” the artist relates, “came and asked
me to make an etching of him. He arranged for a
sitting. He was very ill, but I sat studying him for
a little while, then took the plate and drew him. I
asked him if it was a characteristic pose and he
replied, ‘No, I very seldom sit like this.’ But his
wife came in and said, ‘You have caught him to
perfection, it is himself. When he is not watched
he is always like that.’ She was really touched by
it.” What is significant in the portrait of Renan,
astounding, one might say, is that with lines so
few Zorn has given us not only the outer man,
but a character study of profound insight. Renan,
sunk in his chair, the bulky body topped by the
massive head, the hair suggested with a mere
handful of lines, was like a bomb-shell to such
print-collectors as previously were unacquainted
with Zorn’s work. It was, however, only one of a
group of masterpieces with which the artist made
his début in America, in 1892: Zorn and His Wife,
Faure, The Waltz, The Omnibus, Olga Bratt, with
its elusive charm, and the piquant Girl with the
Cigarette, and Madame Simon, which still remains
one of his most powerful portraits.
ANDERS ZORN. ERNEST RENAN
Size of the original etching, 9¼ × 13⅜ inches
In the Collection of the Author
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
ANDERS ZORN. THE TOAST
Size of the original etching, 12⅝ × 10½ inches
In the Collection of Albert W. Scholle, Esq.
ANDERS ZORN. MADAME SIMON
Size of the original etching, 9⅜ × 6¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
ANDERS ZORN. MISS EMMA RASSMUSSEN
Size of the original etching, 7⅞ × 5⅞ inches
In the Collection of the Author
The Toast is etched from Zorn’s picture painted
by him to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the
Society of the Idun, a scientific and artistic society
in Stockholm. Wieselgren, the President of the
Society, a Viking-like figure, is about to propose a
toast; beyond him, characterized with the fewest
lines, are seen Nordenskjöld, the Arctic explorer;
Hildebrand, the archæologist; Axel Key, professor
of medicine; and Woern, the Minister of Finance.
The plate has all the freshness, all the spontaneity,
of an etching done directly from life and at a white
heat.
Among his many portraits of women, it is difficult
to make a selection. Miss Anna Burnett,
seated at the Piano, is charming. Annie, Mrs. Granberg,
and Kesti—each, in its own way, fascinates
us; but if one were to express a personal preference,
it would be for Miss Emma Rassmussen. The blond
beauty of her hair, the fair, tender flesh, sparkling
eyes, and lips slightly open, showing the firm, small,
even teeth, are in perfect harmony. The line is
more delicate than is the artist’s wont, and both
as a portrait and as an etching it is a lasting delight.
SOME MASTERS OF PORTRAITURE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Prints and Their Makers. Edited by FitzRoy Carrington. 200 illustrations.
New York: Century Co. 1912.
Etching and Etchers. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. 35 original etchings.
London: Macmillan & Co. 1868.
——. Same. 6th edition. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1892.
The Golden Age of Engraving. By Frederick Keppel. 161 illustrations.
New York: The Baker and Taylor Company. 1910.
The Best Portraits in Engraving. By Charles Sumner. New York:
Frederick Keppel. 1875.
Dürer, Albrecht (see Bibliography under “The Master of
the Amsterdam Cabinet and Albrecht Dürer,” page 137).
Van Dyck, Anthony (1599-1641)
Eaux-fortes de Antoine van Dyck; reproduites et publiées par Amand-Durand.
Edited by Georges Duplessis. 21 reproductions. Paris: Amand-Durand.
1874.
Van Dyck; His Original Etchings and His Iconography. By Arthur
Mayger Hind. 38 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, 2 parts.
Part I. Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 3-37. Part II. Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 220-253. Boston.
1915.
———. Reprinted in revised form. 36 illustrations. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company. 1915.
Van Dyck and Portrait Engraving and Etching in the Seventeenth
Century. Edited by Arthur Mayger Hind. 65 reproductions. London and
New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, n. d. (Great Engravers.)
Van Dyck. By H. Knackfuss. Translated by Campbell Dodgson. 55 illustrations.
Bielefeld and Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing. 1899. (Monographs
on Artists.)
Etchings of Van Dyck. Edited by Frank Newbolt. 34 reproductions.
London: George Newnes. n. d.
Etchings by Van Dyck. By Walter H. Sparrow. With an introduction by H.
Singer. 23 reproductions of the first states. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
1905.
L’Iconographie d’Antoine van Dyck, d’après les recherches de H.
Weber. By Friedrich Wibiral. 1 reproduction and 6 plates of watermarks.
Leipzig: A. Danz. 1877.
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606-1669)
The Etched Work of Rembrandt; a Monograph (Written as Introduction
to the Burlington Club Exhibition, 1877) with an Appendix
Respecting Appropriation of the Foregoing in Middleton’s Descriptive
Catalogue. By Francis Seymour Haden. London: Macmillan & Co.
1879.
The Etchings of Rembrandt. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. 4 reproductions
and 36 text illustrations. London: Seeley & Co. 1902. (Portfolio Monographs.)
Rembrandt’s Etchings; an Essay and a Catalogue, with Some Notes
on the Drawings. By Arthur Mayger Hind. London: Methuen & Co. 1912.
Volume 1, Text (with 34 plates illustrating the drawings). Volume 2,
Illustrations (330 reproductions).
Etchings of Rembrandt. Edited by Arthur Mayger Hind. 62 reproductions.
London and New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company. 1907. (Great Engravers.)
Rembrandt. By H. Knackfuss. Translated by Campbell Dodgson. 159
illustrations. Bielefeld and Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing. 1899. (Monographs
on Artists.)
Rembrandt’s Amsterdam. By Frits Lugt. 27 illustrations and map. The
Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 111-169. Boston. 1915.
Rembrandt; His Life, His Work, and His Time. By Emile Michel. Translated
by Florence Simmonds. Edited by Frederick Wedmore. 2 volumes. 317
illustrations. London: William Heinemann. 1895.
L’oeuvre gravé de Rembrandt; Reproductions des planches dans
tout leurs états successifs, avec un catalogue raisonné. By Dmitri
Rovinski. 1000 reproductions. St. Petersburg: L’Académie Impériale des
Sciences. 1890. Volume 1, Text. Volumes 2-4, Reproductions.
——— ———. Supplement. Collected by D. Rovinski. Arranged and described
by N. Tchétchouline. 94 reproductions. St. Petersburg: S. N. Kotoff,
and Leipzig: Karl W. Hiersemann. 1914.
Kritisches Verzeichnis der Radierungen Rembrandts, zugleich eine
Anleitung zu deren Studium. By Woldemar von Seidlitz. Leipzig: E. A.
Seemann. 1895.
Rembrandt; des Meisters Radierungen in 402 Abbildungen. Edited by
Hans Wolfgang Singer. Stuttgart and Leipzig: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt.
1906. (Klassiker der Kunst. Vol. 8.)
Portrait Engraving in France
De la gravure du portrait en France. By Georges Duplessis. Paris:
Rapilly. 1875.
Le peintre-graveur français; un catalogue raisonné d’estampes
gravées par les peintres et les dessinateurs de l’école française,
ouvrage faisant suite au Peintre-graveur de M. Bartsch. By A. P. F.
Robert-Dumesnil. 11 volumes. (Vol. 11. Supplement by Georges Duplessis.)
Paris: Mme. Huzard. 1835-71.
Le Peintre-graveur français continué ... ouvrage faisant
suite au Peintre-Graveur Français de Robert-Dumesnil. By Prosper
de Baudicour. Paris: Mme. Bouchard-Huzard. 1859-1861. 2 volumes.
French Portrait Engraving of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries. By T. H. Thomas. 39 illustrations. London: George Bell &
Sons. 1910.
Mellan, Claude (1598-1688)
Claude Mellan. By Louis R. Metcalfe. 13 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s
Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 258-292. Boston. 1915.
Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre de Claude Mellan d’Abbeville. By
Anatole de Montaiglon. Biography by P. J. Mariette. Abbeville: P. Briez.
1856.
Morin, Jean (before 1590(?)-1650)
Jean Morin. By Louis R. Metcalfe. 11 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s
Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 1-30. Boston. 1912.
Nanteuil, Robert (1623(25?)-1678)
Robert Nanteuil. By Louis R. Metcalfe. 12 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s
Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 5, pp. 525-561. Boston. 1911.
Nanteuil; sa vie et son oeuvre. By Abbé Porrée. Rouen: Cagniard.
1890.
The Drawings and Pastels of Nanteuil. By T. H. Thomas. 15 illustrations.
The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 327-361.
Boston. 1914.
Legros, Alphonse (1837-1911)
Alphonse Legros. By Elisabeth Luther Cary. 10 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s
Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 439-457. Boston. 1912.
Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre gravé et lithographié de M. Alphonse
Legros, 1855-77. By Paul Auguste Poulet-Malassis and A. W. Thibaudeau.
3 plates. Paris: J. Baur. 1877.
Whistler, James Abbott McNeill (1834-1903) (see
Bibliography under “Landscape Etching,” p. 277).
Zorn, Anders (1860- )
Das radierte Werk des Anders Zorn. By Fortunat von Schubert-Soldern.
Illustrated. Dresden: Ernst Arnold. 1905.
Anders Zorn. By Loys Delteil. 328 reproductions. Paris: L’auteur. 1909.
(Le Peintre-graveur illustré, XIXᵉ et XXᵉ siècles. Vol. 4.)
Anders Zorn. By Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer. 5 illustrations. The
Century, Vol. 24, p. 582 (New Series). New York. 1893.
Anders Zorn: Painter-Etcher. By J. Nilsen Laurvik. 18 illustrations.
The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 5, pp. 611-637. Boston. 1911.
LANDSCAPE ETCHING
IN landscape, as in portraiture, we are greeted
on the threshold by Albrecht Dürer. From
his many drawings, water-colors, and the beautifully
engraved backgrounds in a number of his
plates, we know him to have been a profound
student of natural forms and of atmospheric effects,
sensitive to the character of the country he portrays;
and it is a matter of regret that The Cannon
is the only plate in which the landscape element
outweighs in interest the figures. The Cannon,
which is dated 1518, is etched upon an iron plate,
not necessarily because Dürer was unacquainted
with a suitable mordant for copper, but rather,
one is inclined to believe, because, etching having
been used in the decoration of arms and armor,
iron would naturally suggest itself as the most
appropriate metal for the purpose. Although the
cannon (“The Nuremberg Field Serpent”), to the
left, and the five Turks, to the right, are the
main motives of the composition, they are drawn
and bitten with lines of exactly the same weight
and character as the landscape itself, and we
can, if we will, consider them as accessory figures,
concentrating our attention upon the altogether
delightful village, its church spire pointing
heavenwards, while in the distance wooded hills
rise towards the sombre sky, and to the left a seaport
is indicated. Dürer either ignored or was unaware
of the effects to be obtained by repeated
rebitings, and consequently the plate is of a uniform
tone. Within his self-imposed limits he has
thoroughly understood the possibilities of the medium
and has availed himself of them, adopting an
open, linear technique, in marked contrast to his
highly elaborate engravings on copper of this period.
Albrecht Altdorfer, who was born in Regensburg
about 1480 and died in February, 1538, is
notable as one of the earliest interpreters of landscape
for its own sake. He has left us ten landscape
etchings. None of them is dated, but they
clearly belong to his last period. In them he has
merely transferred to metal his mode of pen drawing,
an excellent style in a way, since it is linear
and suggestive, but lacking distinction and that
passionate, dramatic quality which is so impressive
in the painting, St. George, in the Munich Gallery,
the engraving of the Crucifixion; or the Agony in
the Garden, a drawing in the Berlin Print Room.
ALBRECHT DÜRER. THE CANNON
Size of the original etching, 8⅝ × 12⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
AUGUSTIN HIRSCHVOGEL. LANDSCAPE
Size of the original etching, 5⅝ × 8½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
The etchings of Augustin Hirschvogel are
even simpler in treatment than those by Altdorfer.
They bear dates from 1545 to 1549. The more one
studies his landscape plates, breathing the spirit of
the true nature lover, the more fascinating do they
become. He has eliminated all non-essentials, concentrating
his attention upon what were to him the
most significant features, and in this respect he may
have influenced the work of more than one nineteenth
century master.
Hans Sebald Lautensack, who was some
twenty years Hirschvogel’s junior, was born in
Nuremberg about 1524. The greater number of
his landscape plates fall within the years 1551 and
1555. He is neither so simple nor so direct as
Hirschvogel, and his plates suffer from over-elaboration.
In an attempt to give a complete
representation of the scene the value of the line is
lost, and, in the majority of cases, the composition
is lacking in repose.
For almost a century we have no landscape etchings
of prime importance. Then, in 1640, Rembrandt
appears on the scene with his View of Amsterdam,
the first of a series of twenty-seven masterpieces
which, beginning with this plate, comes to
an end with A Clump of Trees with a Vista (1652).
The View of Amsterdam is, among Rembrandt’s
landscapes, comparable to the portrait of himself
leaning on a stone sill, inasmuch as it is, in its own
simple linear mode, a model of what etching can
be at its best.
As in the case of all these etchings, with the exception
of the Three Trees and the Landscape with
a Ruined Tower and Clear Foreground, the sky is
left perfectly blank, and our imagination must
supply the quiet sunshine of a cloudless day or that
delicate grayness which makes Holland a perpetual
delight to the painter.
The Windmill (1641) is Rembrandt’s first dated
etching. It is truly a portrait of a place, not only
in its outer aspect, but in that inner spirit which,
if it be present, moves us so profoundly, as in the
case of Meryon’s etchings of Paris and Piranesi’s
plates of ancient Roman edifices; or, if it be absent,
leaves us disappointed and cold. In the Windmill,
“we feel the stains of weather, the touch of time,
on the structure; we feel the air about it and the
quiet light that rests on the far horizon as the eye
travels over dike and meadow; we are admitted to
the subtlety and sensitiveness of a sight transcending
our own; and even by some intangible
means beyond analysis we partake of something
of Rembrandt’s actual mind and feeling, his sense
of what the old mill meant, not merely as a picturesque
object to be drawn, but as a human element
in the landscape, implying the daily work of
human hands and the association of man and
earth.”[12]
REMBRANDT. THE WINDMILL
Size of the original etching, 5¾ × 8¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
REMBRANDT. THREE TREES
Size of the original etching, 8½ × 11 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
To the same year belong the Landscape with a Cottage
and Haybarn and Landscape with a Cottage and
a Large Tree, two delightfully spacious plates. There
is one etching in 1642, the Cottage with a White
Paling, in which dry-point is judiciously used to
give richness to the shadows.
To the following year, 1643, belongs the Three
Trees, the most famous of Rembrandt’s landscape
etchings. Note how Rembrandt has suggested the
passing of a summer thunder-storm, the rain-charged
clouds rolling away to the left, while from
the right the returning sunshine bathes the composition
in glory, making each freshly washed leaf
and blade of grass sparkle in its beams. Even the
hard, slanting lines of rain in the upper left portion
of the plate have their purpose, affording a needed
contrast to the swiftly changing clouds, which the
freshening breeze drives before it over the peopled
plain and the far-reaching sea in the distance.
In 1645 there are five landscape etchings. If
the Three Trees is Rembrandt’s most elaborate
plate, Six’s Bridge is, in some ways, his most
learned performance. According to tradition, it was
etched “against time,” for a wager, at the country
house of Rembrandt’s friend, Jan Six, while the
servant was fetching the mustard, that had been
forgotten, from a neighboring village. There is,
however, nothing hasty or incomplete about it. It
is, to use Whistler’s words, “finished from the beginning,”
beautifully balanced, not a line wasted,
of its kind a perfect work of art.
There are no more landscapes until 1650, a good
year, since it gives us eight plates, every one worthy
of the most serious consideration. Rembrandt by
this time apparently had become dissatisfied with
the relatively limited range of light and dark obtainable
by the pure etched line, and from now
onwards he relies more and more upon dry-point
to obtain his effects, at times executing his plates
entirely in that medium.
The Landscape with a Haybarn and a Flock of
Sheep is one of the loveliest plates of this period.
There is a brilliancy in the first state, a quiet harmony
in the elaborated second state, which makes
a choice difficult. Each, in its way, is of compelling
beauty.
Hardly less delightful is the Landscape with a
Milkman, with a view of the sea to the right, while
at the left the cottages snuggle beneath their protecting
trees.
REMBRANDT. SIX’S BRIDGE
Size of the original etching, 5⅛ × 8¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
REMBRANDT. LANDSCAPE WITH A RUINED TOWER AND CLEAR FOREGROUND
Size of the original etching, 4⅞ × 12⅝ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
REMBRANDT. LANDSCAPE WITH A HAYBARN AND A FLOCK OF SHEEP
Size of the original etching, 3¼ × 7 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
REMBRANDT. THREE COTTAGES
Size of the original etching, 6¼ × 8 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
The Landscape with a Ruined Tower and Clear
Foreground is, perhaps, of all these etchings the
noblest and the most dramatic. In the sky to
the left are piled thunder clouds. A faint breeze,
the precursor of a coming storm, gently moves the
upper branches of the trees. There is an expectant
hush, a tenseness, and we are made to feel that in
a few minutes the first heavy raindrops will be
driving through the over-charged air. Otherwise
all is still, the sky to the right being yet quiet and
undisturbed. With the fewest etched lines Rembrandt
has indicated the form and growth of the
trees, adding, just where needed to give emphasis
and enrichment, touches of dry-point, concentrating
his richest blacks on the noble clump which
shuts off the road leading toward the left. With
such simple means, with black lines and white
paper, he has given us by his art a more convincing
record of one of Nature’s noblest spectacles than
most painters, with a full palette at their command,
could achieve in a lifetime of labor.
In the Three Cottages dry-point is used with
magnificent effect. Early impressions of this masterpiece
have a richness, a bloom, which is unmatched
among Rembrandt’s landscape plates. A
fine impression of the third state, with the added
shading on the gabled end of the first cottage,
represents the plate admirably. To be seen at its
best, however, it should not be too heavily charged
with ink, since the tree forms thereby are confused.
Work such as this is so seemingly simple that one
may readily overlook the power of analysis and the
superb draughtsmanship it displays. Everyone
who loves Rembrandt’s landscapes—and who that
knows them does not love them?—must bitterly
regret that at about this time, in the very plenitude
of his powers, he saw fit to bring his landscape
work to a close.
It is true that we have the Goldweigher’s Field of
1651—an unsurpassed masterpiece—and in the following
year the Landscape with a Road Beside a
Canal and A Clump of Trees with a Vista; but had
he treated a landscape motive with the passion
which breathes from the Three Crosses, Christ Presented
to the People, or the Presentation in the Temple,
how much richer and fuller would landscape
art have been!
The Goldweigher’s Field, by tradition the country
seat of the Receiver General, Uytenbogært, whose
portrait Rembrandt had etched in 1639 (The Goldweigher),
is, in point of suggestiveness, second to
none of Rembrandt’s plates. The eye is gently led
from field to fertile field, each with its own individual
character and filled with interesting little
details, and finally rests upon the quiet sea which
stretches to the horizon.
Contemporary with Rembrandt, treating scenes
essentially the same, a whole school of etchers produced
an enormous number of plates, many of
them charming, but none to be classed with the
permanently great work in the history of the art.
REMBRANDT. GOLDWEIGHER’S FIELD
Size of the original etching, 4¾ × 12⅝ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
JACOB RUYSDAEL. WHEAT FIELD
Size of the original etching, 4 × 6 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
Hercules Seghers is interesting because of his
choice of wild, rugged mountains for his subject-matter
and of his experiments in color printing,
but as an etcher he is of historical importance only.
Jacob Ruysdael displays a knowledge of tree
forms and an appreciation of their beauty, rare at
any time. His work at its best recalls that of the
great nineteenth century master, Théodore Rousseau,
though the latter’s few plates show a greater
economy of means and an equal affection for Nature
in her wilder moods. The Wheat Field is one
of Ruysdael’s most satisfying plates. The sky, with
its rolling clouds, is simply treated and shows a
knowledge and reticence in the use of line denied
to the greater number of his more laborious contemporaries,
who, in the main, when they endeavored
to “finish” a plate ended by leaving it
fatigued and stiff.
Claude Gellée, called Claude Lorrain, is the
one seventeenth century French landscape etcher.
Born in the year 1600 in the Diocese of Toul and
the Duchy of Lorraine (whence he derives the name
by which he is best known), early orphaned, at the
age of thirteen, after a varied and picturesque boyhood,
journeyed to Rome, thence to Naples, and
later to Venice. In 1627 he settled permanently in
Rome, where he remained until his death in 1682.
His etchings are the fruit of that indefatigable
study of nature which he pursued almost until the
day of his death. Heedless of fatigue, he would
spend day after day, from sunrise until nightfall,
noting every phase of dawn, the glory of sunrise,
or the majesty of the sunset hours. For him the
modest nook held no charm and exerted no fascination.
He chose for his theme Nature in her more
spacious aspects—wide-stretching horizons and
deep overarching skies, with clumps of stately
trees, between and beyond which are to be seen
castle-crowned hills, or a half-ruined temple, the
relic of Imperial Rome, a passionate love for which
burned with a steady flame in Claude, more Roman
than the Romans themselves in his worship of the
Eternal City and all that could recall her vanished
glory.
Claude’s paintings are to be seen in nearly every
European gallery of importance, but his etchings
are seldom met with. Really fine impressions (by
which alone they can be judged) are unfortunately
very rare. His work would seem to divide itself
into two periods: 1630 to 1637, and 1662 and
1663. It is to the earlier period that his finest
work belongs, the later plates being heavy and
stiff in treatment. Claude’s etchings show none of
that economy and suggestiveness of line which
make of Rembrandt’s most summary sketch a
continuous stimulus and delight. They are highly
wrought pictures, as carefully and lovingly finished
in all details as are the paintings themselves. Etching,
dry-point, the burnisher, and a tone produced
by roughening the surface of the plate with pumice-stone
or some similar material, all are called into
play to produce a harmonious result, and of their
kind there is nothing finer.
The Dance Under the Trees shows Claude in his
most purely pastoral vein—classic pastoral—seen
through Virgilian eyes and interpreted in the spirit
of the Eclogues. It is carefully composed and
beautifully drawn; and if, to our more modern
taste, there seems a little too obvious an “arrangement,”
with the two vistas balancing one another
at the right and left of the central group of trees,
we must remember that landscape, no less than
literature or costume, has its fashions, and that,
in Claude’s time, balance and proportion were esteemed
of greater value than the freedom and
spontaneity which we today, more insistent on the
individual note, esteem the chief charm of etching.
Le Bouvier, etched in 1636, is accounted Claude’s
masterpiece. “For technical quality of a certain
delicate kind it is the finest landscape etching in
the world. Its transparency and gradation have
never been surpassed.”[13] It is the work of a
real nature lover and true poet, and sums up in a
few square inches all that is best of Claude’s art
when it has shaken itself free from the “set scene”
and theatricalities. Technically it is not less admirable.
The copper has been caressed, so to speak,
with the needle, until it responds by yielding all
those elusive half lights and luminous shadows
which play among the leaves of the noble trees to
the left, while on the right the landscape fairly
swims in light and air. For this same quality of
sunlight Claude tries again and again in his etchings,
in Sunrise with complete success. When he
essays to interpret Nature in her sterner moods, as
in the Flock in Stormy Weather (his one plate of the
year 1651), he is far less happy. The clouds, which
should be heavy with rain, are unconvincing,
though the suggestion of movement in the trees is
excellent, and in no other plate has he treated
architecture with a firmer touch or in a more picturesque
manner.
After the middle of the seventeenth century,
etching, as an original, creative art, is increasingly
neglected for almost two hundred years, though it
grows in popularity as an easy and expeditious
mode of “forwarding” a plate to be finished with
the burin.
CLAUDE LORRAIN. LE BOUVIER
Size of the original etching, 5⅛ x 7¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
CHARLES JACQUE. TROUPEAU DE PORCS
Size of the original etching, 5⅛ × 8½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
To Charles Jacque, in the early “forties,” belongs
the honor of having restored etching to its
proper and legitimate place as a suggestive and
linear art. His method is based on a thorough
understanding of its limitations and qualities as
exemplified by Rembrandt and his lesser contemporaries
in Holland; and both by his work (he has
left between five and six hundred plates) and by his
influence, he is the father of the nineteenth century
revival of etching, not only in France, where its
possibilities were appreciated at once by the Romantic
group and the “Men of 1830,” but in England,
through Seymour Haden and Whistler.
Charles Jacque was born in Paris on May 23,
1813, and to the last (he died at the ripe age of 81,
in the year 1894) he retained, in country life, something
of the city man’s point of view, the love of the
“picturesque,” the anecdotic, in marked contrast
to his greater contemporary, Jean-François Millet,
whose few etchings form an epic of the soil even
more powerful than his paintings. For all that,
Jacque is a true etcher, working along the soundest
lines and safest traditions. He is unequal: his work
suffers at times from a hankering for “finish”; but
at his best his little plates are delightfully suggestive,
every line being there for a purpose, and not a
line too much.
Up to 1848 he had completed some three hundred
etchings and dry-points, and it is among this group
that many “masterpieces in little” are to be found.
It would be hard to find a better model of style
than the Wheat Field. The print is scarcely
larger than a visiting card, but it conveys a sense
of spaciousness and “out of doors” sadly lacking in
many a painting in full color and of a hundred times
its size. The Truffle Gatherers is likewise of modest
size, but the landscape with its leafless trees is full
of air, and the sense of life and movement, as well
as the effective composition of the “rooters” accompanied
by their herdsman, is, from many points
of view, unexcelled.
The Storm—Landscape with a White Horse is
one of Jacque’s finest interpretations of wind and
rough weather. This dry-point, unfortunately very
rare, recalls the work of Rembrandt in his mature
period. The sky, slashed with driving showers, the
trees swayed this way and that by the gusty wind,
the white horse with legs firmly braced, its mane
and tail matted by the rain against its neck and
flank, all combine to heighten and intensify the
effect.
Younger than Jacque by four years (he was
born February 15, 1817), Charles-François Daubigny
differs from him in that it is the lyric, the
spiritual aspect of nature, rather than the incidental
and picturesque details of country life, which
moved him.
CHARLES JACQUE. STORM—LANDSCAPE WITH A WHITE HORSE
Size of the original dry-point, 6⅜ × 8⅜ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DAUBIGNY. DEER IN A WOOD
Size of the original etching, 6⅜ × 4⅜ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
None of the other Barbizon men has so successfully
interpreted the freshness of early morning,
the sparkle of sunrise on tender young leaves or
dew-bespangled grass, the tranquility of the quiet
pool hidden in the depth of the forest. His first
plate, etched in collaboration with his friend Meissonier,
is dated 1838, and all through the “forties”
Daubigny continued to etch either original motives
or such as were commissioned by editors for the
embellishment of various publications, in many
cases poems and songs of a pastoral nature. It is,
however, to the following decade that his finest
work belongs—a series of little masterpieces which,
in their way, remain unequalled. His plates, small
in size, are as carefully worked out as those of
Claude but with a truer feeling for the elusive
charm of still, untroubled places. Later his style
grows broader and bolder. Less is actually said,
more is suggested. There is a freedom in his line
work which these etchings of his middle period had
hardly led us to expect but for which, in truth, they
were the finest preparation. He has learned to
eliminate the non-essential; and in etching the art
of omission is the supreme virtue.
One of the most suggestive plates of his middle
period is Deer in a Wood. The treatment is perfectly
simple and straightforward, truly linear, as all good
etching should be, but the spirit of the scene is
captured and portrayed in these few, seemingly
careless, lines. Deer Coming Down to Drink is another
altogether delightful plate in the same series.
The early morning air is vibrant with the glory of
sunrise, and the little leaves clap their hands in joy.
“Has it not often occurred to you, in your explorations
as a tourist, to see suddenly open before
you a break in the landscape, a little valley, calm,
in repose, full of elegant and tranquil forms, of
discreet and harmonious colors, of softened shadows
and lights, bordered by hillsides with rounded
and retiring forms and where no step seems to have
troubled the poetic silence? A pond, placed there
like a mirror, reflects the picture, and bears on its
cup-like edge sheaves of rushes, coltsfoot, arrow-heads,
water-strawberries and the white and yellow
flowers of the water lily, amid which swarm a buzzing
world of insects and gnats.... As you
approach, some heron, occupied in dressing its
plumage, flies off, snapping its beak; the snipe runs
away, piping its little cry; then everything falls
again into silence, and the valley, welcoming you
as its guest, takes up under your eyes its mysterious
work.”[14] All this and more Daubigny gives us by
his art.
CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DAUBIGNY. DEER COMING DOWN TO DRINK
Size of the original etching, 6⅛ × 4⅝ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DAUBIGNY. MOONLIGHT ON THE BANKS OF THE OISE
Size of the original etching, 4⅜ × 6½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
Daubigny’s success as a painter, the constantly
increasing demand for his work, left him little time,
as years went by, for etching. “If only I could
paint a picture that wouldn’t sell,” he once said in
sheer desperation, and, momentarily, his superb
renderings of the mystery of evening and night accomplished
his object, though now they are jealously
guarded in some of the world’s finest collections.
But to etch night, to suggest moonlight—there
was a problem indeed! Whistler in his “Nocturnes”
paints, so to speak, on his plate with
printer’s ink. Daubigny relies on lines alone, to
produce his result. “Night cannot be etched” is the
dictum of more than one authority. No, nor sunlight
either, nor clouds! None of these things can
be pictured so that blind eyes can see them. But
to those who will meet the etcher half way, who
are content with a suggestion and are capable of
reconstructing from it the artist’s mood, these
simple linear plates of Daubigny’s last period are
a revelation and a delight. Moonlight on the Banks
of the Oise measures scant four by six inches, yet
what a feeling of space there is in it! Only a born
etcher could have succeeded by means so simple,
and seemingly inadequate, in capturing the very
spirit of such a scene.
Corot’s etched work comprises fourteen plates.
It was not until 1845, when he was in his fiftieth
year, that he made his first experiment. “Corot
took a prepared copper-plate and drew in the outlines
and masses of the well-known Souvenir of
Tuscany, but did not proceed to the ‘biting in’
process. Some years later Félix Bracquemond discovered
the plate in a nail-box at Corot’s studio
and begged the master to complete it, offering to
take charge of the ‘biting in.’ Corot then took the
plate and added the tones and details of the final
state.... There was something in the use of
mordants and acids that seemed to frighten Corot,
and he always called in some good friend such as
Bracquemond, Michelin or Delaunay to assist in
this delicate process.”[15]
In etching his method is as personal as in his
painting. He entirely disregards all the accepted
canons of the art. Line, as line, hardly exists in his
plates; it is scribble, scribble, everywhere. The tree
trunks, the rocks, foreground and distance, often
the foliage itself, all are as “wrong as wrong can be,”
so far as accurate representation is concerned. Yet
Corot, great artist and great nature poet, can transgress
every rule and still succeed in conveying his
message. In the best of his etchings he does succeed
admirably. Souvenir of Italy and Environs of Rome
of 1865 (Corot was then nearly seventy years of
age) are among the most interesting prints of the
period. In these plates, and others like them,
Corot has given free rein to his poetic and imaginative
powers and has drawn upon his memory of the
Italy of his youth. In method, in their disregard
of line, form and texture, they are shining examples
of what etching should not be. In decorative quality,
poetic suggestion, and sentiment they are altogether
delightful.
CAMILLE COROT. SOUVENIR OF ITALY
Size of the original etching, 11⅝ × 8⅝ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET. THE GLEANERS
Size of the original etching, 7½ × 10 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
In Millet’s etchings the landscape and the
figures are so inter-related as to make any separate
study of them unavailing. They are models of
significant draughtsmanship and profound feeling,
in which nothing is introduced that does not bear
directly upon the main theme. Shepherdess Knitting,
Peasants Going to Work, Two Men Digging,
and above all the Gleaners, have each their perfect
setting. The wide-stretching plain, slightly undulating,
shimmers in the hot summer sunshine,
which bathes in a golden glow the three women
gleaning, the harvesters gathering in the rich
fruits of their toil, and the little village, snuggling
amid its trees in the far distance to the right.
Etchers, like poets, are “born, not made.” But,
as also in the case of poets, natural gifts will avail
little if they are not reinforced by that capacity for
taking infinite pains, through which alone a man
may so master his medium as to shape it readily
to his artistic needs. The etched work of Seymour
Haden is no chance happening. It is the fruit of
close and analytical study, by a man of forceful
character and scientific attainments, of the best
model of style, the etchings of Rembrandt; supplemented
by a familiarity with the work of his contemporaries
in France, the land of clear and logical
thinking; and in no art is clarity and brevity of
speech more essential than in etching. From the
beginning, Seymour Haden was in possession of
all his powers, both in etching and in dry-point.
There is no uncertainty in that which he wishes to
say, no fumbling in his manner of saying it. The
reticences and half-hesitations of Daubigny are not
for him; there is no place for Corot’s scribbled poetry.
He will give us a strong man’s interpretation
of the lovely English landscape, in which he takes a
pride, as in any other personal possession—God’s
visible and abounding bounty to a superior people.
It is “the bones of things” (his own phrase) that he
wishes, above all else, to give. At his best he succeeds
magnificently, but in much of his work,
structurally fine though it be, it is the frame rather
than the spirit that he portrays.
SEYMOUR HADEN. CARDIGAN BRIDGE
Size of the original etching, 4½ × 5⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
SEYMOUR HADEN. BY-ROAD IN TIPPERARY
Size of the original etching, 7½ × 11¼ inches
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
SEYMOUR HADEN. SUNSET IN IRELAND
Size of the original dry-point, 5⅜ × 8½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
SEYMOUR HADEN. SAWLEY ABBEY
Size of the original etching, 10 × 14⅞ inches
In the Collection of the Author
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
A Water Meadow (incidentally, a plate which the
artist himself liked) is a fine transcript of a sudden
shower in the Hampshire lowlands. It is bold and
painter-like, admirable from every point of view,
though some may prefer On the Test, with its truly
noble sky, etched later in the day from a somewhat
different point of view. Cardigan Bridge is a model
of what a sketch should be, free, suggestive, spontaneous,
yet full of knowledge. It is one of five
similar plates, etched in a single day, August 17,
1864, a “good day” indeed, such as rarely comes to
etchers or to painters! The more one sees of modern
etching, the more one is inclined to value work of
this order. It is so easy, so fatally easy, to make
wriggles in the water and scribbles in the sky; but
to suggest, by these seeming careless loops and
latchets, the flow of the river, the movement of
clouds, the splendor of the setting sun—that indeed
is another matter! Yet all this, and more, Seymour
Haden has done in a magisterial manner.
By-road in Tipperary is the largest and most
highly prized of his woodland plates and well deserves
the reputation it so long has enjoyed. Structurally
the trees are very fine, both as to branch
and stem drawing; and, as in the two plates of
Kensington Gardens, the suggestion of foliage with
the light filtering through the leaves is quite beautiful.
Sunset in Ireland is a plate which the artist,
the collector, and the general public all unite in
praising. “That is the plate,” said Seymour Haden,
shortly before his death, “which, in years to come,
will fetch the enormous prices!” And his prophecy
has come true. Both in its earlier states, less rich
in burr, with a luminous evening effect, and in the
later and darker impressions, it is “a thing of
beauty”—one of the most remarkable landscape
plates of modern times, wherein the artist has
captured, for once, all the poetry and melancholy
sentiment of the twilight hour. Sawley Abbey, on
the River Ribble in Lancashire, has, to some of us,
however, a “swing” and pattern, which make of it
a better and more manly plate. It must be seen in
an early state to be adequately judged. For some
inexplicable reason the artist saw fit later to “clean
up” the sky and all the foreground to the right,
leaving the plate cold, empty, and almost meaningless.
Nine Barrow Down, a dry-point, is in Haden’s
happiest vein. It is instinct with that priceless
quality, the “art which conceals art,” and is so
seeming simple that one may readily forget that its
“simplicity” is the result of a most rigid selection
of the essential lines, guided by the knowledge of a
lifetime.
There is a growing tendency among the younger
and more “advanced” collectors to belittle Seymour
Haden and his work. Unquestionably there
are many etchings which fall far short of his best;
but at his best, in the dozen or two plates of which
he himself approved, he towers far above any of
his contemporaries, and there seems little likelihood
of his supremacy in landscape being seriously
threatened.
J. A. McN. WHISTLER. ZAANDAM (First State)
Size of the original etching, 5⅛ × 8⅝ inches
In the Collection of Howard Mansfield, Esq.
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
REMBRANDT. VIEW OF AMSTERDAM FROM THE EAST
Size of the original etching, 4⅛ × 5⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(If supported click figure to enlarge.)
Whistler, “the greatest etcher and the most accomplished
lithographer who ever lived” (according
to Mr. Joseph Pennell), seems to have interested
himself in landscape hardly at all. Not even
his most ardent disciples would assert that the
master’s few purely landscape plates contribute
greatly to the pyramid of his fame. But even here
one must tread softly. Whistlerium tremens is still
a highly contagious disease; and has not his official
biographer written “All his work is alike perfect”?
How then may a modest lecturer presume to praise
or compare? Let Mr. Pennell speak: “Look at
Rembrandt’s prints made, I do not know whether
with Amsterdam or Zaandam in the background,
and then at Whistler’s of the same subjects. Rembrandt
drew and bit and printed these little plates
as no one had up to his time. But Whistler is as
much in advance of Rembrandt as that great artist
was of his predecessors. In these little distant views
of absolutely the same subject, Whistler has triumphed.
It is not necessary to explain how: you
have only to see the prints to know it.... The
older master is conservative and mannered; the
modern master, respecting all the great art of the
past, is gracious and sensitive, and perfectly free.”
“You have only to see the prints to know it.”
Well, let us look at two of them: Rembrandt’s
View of Amsterdam, of 1640, and Whistler’s
Zaandam. “Why drag in Velasquez?” the master of
the gentle art of making enemies is reported to
have said, upon one historic occasion. This time,
so far as landscape etching is concerned, may it
not be Rembrandt’s turn to say, “Why drag in
Whistler?”
LANDSCAPE ETCHING
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fine Prints. By Frederick Wedmore. 15 illustrations. Edinburgh: John
Grant. 1905.
The Great Painter-Etchers from Rembrandt to Whistler. By Malcolm
C. Salaman. Edited by Charles Holme. 191 illustrations. London, Paris,
New York: The Studio. 1914.
Four Masters of Etching. [Haden, Jacquemart, Whistler, Legros.] By
Frederick Wedmore. Original etchings by Haden, Jacquemart, Whistler, and
Legros. London: Fine Art Society. 1883.
Dutch Etchers of the Seventeenth Century. By Laurence Binyon. 4
reproductions and 29 text illustrations. London: Seeley & Co. 1895.
(Portfolio Artistic Monographs. No. 21.)
Altdorfer, Albrecht (c. 1480-1538)
Albrecht Altdorfer. By T. Sturge Moore. Edited by Laurence Binyon.
25 illustrations. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.; London: The Unicorn
Press. 1901.
Albrecht Altdorfers Landschafts Radierungen. Edited by Max J.
Friedländer. 9 reproductions and 1 text illustration. Berlin: Bruno Cassirer.
1906. (Graphische Gesellschaft. Publication 3.)
Albrecht Altdorfer and Wolf Huber. By Hermann Voss. 160 reproductions
on 63 plates. Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann. 1910. (Meister
der Graphik. Vol. 3.)
Gellée, Claude, called Lorrain (1600-1682)
Claude Lorrain; Painter and Etcher. By George Graham. 4 reproductions
and 23 text illustrations. London: Seeley & Co. 1895. (The Portfolio
Artistic Monographs.)
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (See also Bibliography
under “Some Masters of Portraiture,” p. 224.)
Rembrandt’s Landscape Etchings. By Laurence Binyon. 8 illustrations.
The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 407-432. Boston. 1912.
Jacque, Charles Émile (1813-1894)
L’oeuvre de Ch. Jacque; catalogue de ses eaux-fortes et pointes
sèches. By Jules Marie Joseph Guiffrey. With an original etching. Paris:
Mlle. Lemaire. 1866.
———. Nouvelles eaux-fortes et pointes sèches. Supplement au
catalogue. Paris: Jouaust & Sigaux. 1884.
Charles Jacque. By Robert J. Wickenden. 18 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s
Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 74-101. Boston. 1912.
——— ———. Reprinted. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1914. (Print-Collectors’
Booklets.)
Daubigny, Charles Francois (1817-1878)
C. Daubigny et son oeuvre gravé. By Frédéric Henriet. 5 original etchings
and 4 reproductions. Paris: A. Levy. 1875.
Daubigny. By Jean Laran. 48 reproductions. Paris: Librairie centrale des
Beaux-Arts. n. d. (L’Art de Notre Temps.)
Charles-François Daubigny; Painter and Etcher. By Robert J. Wickenden.
15 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp.
177-206. Boston. 1913.
——— ———. Reprinted. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1914. (Print-Collectors’
Booklets.)
Corot, Jean Baptiste Camille (1796-1875)
Corot. By Loys Delteil. An original etching and 102 reproductions. Paris:
L’auteur. 1910. (Le peintre-graveur illustré, XIXᵉ et XXᵉ siècles. Vol. 5.)
Corot and Millet. With critical essays by Gustave Geffroy and Arsène
Alexandre. Edited by Charles Holme. 120 illustrations. London, Paris, New
York: John Lane. 1902. (The Studio.)
“Le Père Corot.” By Robert J. Wickenden. 9 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s
Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 365-386. Boston. 1912.
——— ———. Reprinted. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1914. (Print-Collectors’
Booklets.)
Millet, Jean-François (1814-1875)
Jean-François Millet. By Arsène Alexandre. The Etchings of J. F.
Millet. By Frederick Keppel. 85 illustrations. London and New York:
John Lane. 1903. (The Studio.)
Jean-François Millet. By Loys Delteil. Illustrated. Paris: L’auteur.
1906. (Le peintre-graveur illustré, XIXᵉ et XXᵉ siècles. Vol. I.)
Alfred Lebrun’s Catalogue of the Etchings, Heliographs, Lithographs
and Woodcuts Done by Jean-François Millet. Translated from
the French by Frederick Keppel. With additional notes and a sketch of the
artist’s life. 7 reproductions. New York: Frederick Keppel & Co. 1887.
Jean-François Millet; Painter-Etcher. By Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer.
With a biographical sketch of Millet by Frederick Keppel. 11 illustrations.
New York: Frederick Keppel & Co. 1901. (The Keppel Booklets.
1st series.)
The Art and Etchings of Jean-François Millet. By Robert J.
Wickenden. 14 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 2,
pp. 225-250. Boston. 1912.
——— ———. Reprinted. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1914.
(Print-Collectors’ Booklets.)
Millet’s Drawings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. By Robert J.
Wickenden. 11 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 1,
pp. 3-30. Boston. 1914.
Haden, Francis Seymour (1818-1910)
A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Work of Francis Seymour
Haden. By Sir William Richard Drake. London: Macmillan & Co. 1880.
The Engraved Work of Sir Francis Seymour Haden, P. R. E. By H.
Nazeby Harrington. 250 reproductions on 109 plates. Liverpool: Henry
Young & Sons. 1910.
The Water-Colors and Drawings of Sir Seymour Haden, P. R. E. By
H. Nazeby Harrington. 8 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s Quarterly,
Vol. 1, No. 4, pp. 405-419. Boston. 1911.
Sir Seymour Haden, Painter-Etcher. By Frederick Keppel. 5 illustrations.
New York: Frederick Keppel & Co. 1901. (The Keppel Booklets.
1st series.)
Personal Characteristics of Sir Seymour Haden, P. R. E. By Frederick
Keppel. 27 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s Quarterly. 2 parts. Part I.
Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 291-316. Part II. Vol 1, No. 4, pp. 421-442. Boston. 1911.
Whistler, James Abbott McNeill
The Etched Work of Whistler. Illustrated by Reproductions in
Collotype of the Different States of the Plates. Compiled, arranged,
and described by Edward G. Kennedy. With an introduction by Royal Cortissoz.
1002 reproductions. New York: The Grolier Club. 1910.
A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etchings and Drypoints of James
Abbott McNeill Whistler. By Howard Mansfield. 1 portrait. Chicago:
Caxton Club. 1909.
Whistler as a Critic of His Own Prints. By Howard Mansfield. 12 illustrations.
The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 367-393.
Boston. 1913.
The Life of James McNeill Whistler. By Elizabeth Robins Pennell and
Joseph Pennell. 97 illustrations. 5th edition. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott
Company. 1911.
Mr. Whistler’s Lithographs; the Catalogue. By Thomas R. Way. 1
lithograph. London: George Bell & Sons. 1896.
Whistler’s Lithographs. By Thomas R. Way. 18 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s
Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 279-309. Boston. 1913.
The Lithographs by Whistler, Illustrated by Reproductions in
Photogravure and Lithography, Arranged According to the Catalogue
by Thomas R. Way, with Additional Subjects Not Before Recorded.
166 reproductions. New York: Kennedy & Co. 1914.
The Art of James McNeill Whistler. By T. R. Way and G. R. Dennis.
11 portraits and 41 plates. London: George Bell & Sons. 1904.
Whistler’s Etchings; a Study and a Catalogue. By Frederick Wedmore.
London: A. W. Thibaudeau. 1886.
———. Same. 2nd edition. London: P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. 1899.
The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. By J. A. McN. Whistler. London:
William Heinemann. 1890.
———. Same. 2nd edition. 1892.
———. Same. 3rd edition. 1904.
The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. Edited by Sheridan Ford. Paris:
Delabrosse & Compagnie. 1890.
Cameron, David Young (1865- )
D. Y. Cameron; an Illustrated Catalogue of His Etched Work; with
an Introductory Essay and Descriptive Notes on Each Plate. By
Frank Rinder. 444 reproductions. Glasgow: J. MacLehose & Sons. 1912.
Cameron’s Etchings; a Study and a Catalogue. By Frederick Wedmore.
London: R. Gutekunst. 1903.
Bone, Muirhead (1876- )
Etchings and Drypoints by Muirhead Bone. By Campbell Dodgson.
Portrait. London: Obach & Co. 1909.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
Punctuation has been retained as published.
