Fig. 74.—THOMAS DE LEU.
Henri IV.
We have said it is Callot's merit to have lifted the French school of engraving out of the rut in which it dragged, and to have opened for it a new path. He did not, however, accomplish the work with an entire independence, nor without some leanings towards that Italy in which he had been trained. After working in Florence under Canta-Gallina, whose freedom of style and fantastic taste could not but prove irresistible to the future artist of Franca Trippa and Fritellino, he had been obliged to return to Nancy. Thence he escaped a second time, and thither was a second time brought back by his eldest brother, who had been despatched in pursuit. A third journey took him to Rome; and there, whether glad to be rid of him or weary of debate, his family let him remain.
It is probable that during his expatriation[30] Callot never so much as dreamed of learning from the Old Masters; but he did not fail to make a close study of certain contemporaries who were masters so called. Paul V. was Pope; and the age of Raphael and Marc Antonio, of Julius II. and Leo X., was for ever at an end. The enfeebling eclecticism of the Carracci, and the profitless fecundity of Guido, had given currency to all sorts of second-rate qualities, and in painting had substituted prettiness for beauty. The result was an invasion of frivolity, alike in manners and beliefs, which was destined to find its least dubious expression in the works of Le Josépin and later on in those of an artist of kindred tastes with the Lorraine engraver—the fantastical Salvator Rosa. When Callot settled in Rome in 1609, Le Josépin had already reached the climax of fame and fortune; Salvator, at an interval of nearly thirty years, was on the heels of his first success. Coming, as he did, to take a place among the dexterous and the eccentric, it seems that Callot could not have chosen a better time. It was not long before he attracted attention; for when he left Rome for Florence, where he produced some of his liveliest work, his name and his capacity were already in repute.
Fig. 75.—CALLOT.
From the Set entitled "Balli di Sfessania."
At Florence his capacity was perfected under the influence of Giulio Parigi; and, thanks to the favour of Duke Cosmo II., which he easily obtained, his name soon became famous in the world of fashion as among connoisseurs. Unlike his countrymen, Claude Lorraine and the noble Poussin, who, some years later, were in this same Italy to live laborious and thoughtful lives, Callot freely followed his peculiar vein, and saw in art no more than a means of amusement, in the people about him only subjects for caricature, and in imaginative and even religious subjects but a pretext for grotesque invention. Like another French satirist, Mathurin Regnier, who had preceded him in Rome, he was addicted to vulgar types, to rags and deformities, even to the stigmata of debauchery. Thus, the works of both these two men, whom we may compare together, too often breathe a most dishonourable atmosphere of vice. With a frankness which goes the length of impudence, they give full play to their taste for degradation and vile reality; and yet their vigour of expression does not always degenerate into cynicism, nor is the truth of their pictures always shameless. The fact is, both had the secret of saying exactly enough to express their thoughts, even when these were bred by the most capricious fancy. They may be reproached with not caring to raise the standard of their work; but it is impossible to deny them the merit of having painted ugliness of every kind firmly and with elegant precision, nor that of having given, each in his own language, a definite and truly national form to that art of satire which had been hardly so much as rough-hewn in the caricatures and pamphlets of the League.
