"Le Bouvier."
Abraham Bosse is doubtless a second-rate man, but he is far from having no merit at all. He is an intelligent, if not a very delicate observer, who knows how to impart to his figures and to the general aspect of a scene an appearance of reality which is not altogether the truth, but which comes very near to having its charm. He certainly possesses the instinct of correct drawing, in default of refined taste and feeling; and finally, to take him simply as an engraver, he has much of the bold and firm handling of Callot, with something already of that cheerful and thoroughly French cleverness which was destined to be more and more developed in the national school of engraving, and to reach perfection in the second half of the seventeenth century.
To Abraham Bosse are owing decided improvements in the construction of printing-presses, the composition of varnishes, and all the practical parts of the art; to him some technical studies are also due, the most interesting of which, the "Traité des Manières de Graver sur l'Airain par le Moyen des Eaux-fortes," is, if not the first, at least one of the first books on engraving published in France. We may add that the works of Abraham Bosse, like those of all other etchers of his time, show a continual tendency to imitate with the needle the work of the graver: a tendency worth remarking, though blamable in some respects, as its result is to deprive each class of work of its peculiar character, and from etching in particular to remove its appearance of freedom and ease.
We have reached the moment when the French school of engraving entered the path of progress, no more to depart from it, and when, after having followed in the rear of foreign engravers, the French masters at length began to make up with and almost to outdistance them. Before proceeding, we must glance at the movement of those schools whose beginnings we have already traced.
Fig. 79.—CLAUDE LORRAINE.
"Le Chevrier."
The line of really great Italian painters went out with the sixteenth century. Domenichino, indeed, Annibale Carracci, and a few others, glorified the century that followed; but their works, although full of sentiment, skill, and ability, are quite as much affected by the pernicious eclecticism of the period and by the general decline in taste. After them all the arts declined. Sculpture and architecture became more and more degraded under the influence of Bernini and Borromini. Athirst for novelty of any kind, people had gradually come to think the most extravagant fancies clever. To bring the straight line into greater disrepute, statues and bas-reliefs were tortured as by a hurricane; attitudes, draperies, and even immovable accessories were all perturbed and wavering. The engravers were no better than the painters, sculptors, and architects. By dint of exaggerating the idealistic creed, they had fallen into mere insanity; and in the midst of this degradation of art, they aimed at nothing save excitement and novelty, so that their invention was only shown in irregular or overlengthy lines, and their impetuosity in bad drawing. Daily wandering further from the paths of the masters, the Italian engravers at last attained, through the abuse of method, a complete oblivion of the essential conditions of their art; so that with few exceptions, till the end of the eighteenth century, nothing is to be found save barren sleight-of-hand in the works of that very school, which, in the days of Marc Antonio and his pupils, had been universally triumphant.
