Engraving: Its Origin, Processes, and History

by comte Henri Delaborde

Adam and Eve driven from Paradise.

Considered only from the point of view of execution the pieces engraved by Lucas van Leyden are far from possessing the same largeness of design and modelling, and the same simplicity of handling, which the works of Marc Antonio exhibit, and, in a word, have none of that masterly ease in the rendering of form which characterises the Italian engraver. Nor do they exhibit the determination to pursue the truth even in minute details, and to sternly insist on the portrayal of such truth when recognised, which distinguishes the work of Albert Dürer. They are to be specially praised for delicacy of handling, and for the skilful application of the processes of engraving to the picturesque representation of reality. Thus, instead of surrounding with an invariably firm outline objects or bodies at a distance from one another, instead of treating alike the contour of a figure in the foreground, and that of a tree, or group of trees, in the background, Lucas van Leyden altered his work to suit the degree of relative clearness or uncertainty presented in nature by the forms of objects at different distances from the eye. An unbroken line is his method for giving the required boldness to such contours as, from the place they occupy, must be strongly defined and dominate the rest. When, on the contrary, he wishes to reproduce the half-veiled lines of a distant landscape, and to imitate that tremulous and floating aspect assumed by an object in proportion to its remoteness and the amount of intervening atmosphere, he changes his touch; and, instead of bounding by a single continuous line the object reproduced, employs a series of small broken lines, superimposed in a horizontal or oblique direction; and thus, instead of a dry definition of outline, he renders with deliberate hesitation that floating quality which is to be observed in nature.

Fig. 54.—LUCAS VAN LEYDEN.

The Visitation.

Lucas van Leyden was the first amongst engravers who took into account with any measure of success the assumed distances of his models, in order to organise in their representation a varying value of tones and a general gradation of force. This important change he introduced from the beginning: that is to say, from 1508, the year of his first dated print, "The Monk Sergius Killed by Mahomet" (which, by the way, might be more appropriately entitled "Mahomet before the Body of a Hermit Murdered by One of his Servants").[26] Here, as in the master's other prints, the backgrounds are treated with so light a touch that their distance can be felt; the handling becomes less energetic, the burin ploughs the copper less heavily, as the objects recede from the front of the composition. Moreover, every subordinate form is observed and rendered with singular delicacy; every face and every detail of drapery bear testimony, by the way they are engraved, to the clear insight of the artist and his extraordinary skill of hand. His work is strictly realistic, his style precise and clear rather than loftily inspired; and we look almost in vain to him for taste, properly so called, the feeling for the beautiful, in fact, the understanding of the ideal conditions of art.

Fig. 55.—LUCAS VAN LEYDEN.

Pyramus and Thisbe.

This it is which constitutes the principal difference, and clearly marks the distance, between the talent of Lucas van Leyden and that of Mantegna, of Marc Antonio, or of any other Italian engraver of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. Besides, neither the defects nor the merits of the master are entirely the result of his inclinations or his personal habits. The very spirit of Dutch art and the instinctive preferences of the future school of the seventeenth century are to be found in embryo in his works, which tend less to initiate us into the mysteries of the invisible, than to place before us the faithful image of what really exists. "It was the fate of Holland," as Eugène Fromentin has well said[27] "to like ce qui ressemble, to return to it one day or other, to outlive all besides, and to survive and be saved itself by portraiture." Taking the word in its widest acceptation, Lucas van Leyden is already engraving "portraits." It is by the careful imitation of living nature or still-life that he means to interest us: even when his models are in themselves of little worth, or, as is sometimes the case, are the reverse of beautiful.