Engraving: Its Origin, Processes, and History

by comte Henri Delaborde

Abandoning the law, he therefore set out for Paris where he arrived poor and unknown, but determined to succeed. The question was, how without introductions to gain patrons? how to make profitable acquaintances in the great city? After losing some days in quest of a good opening, it is said that he hit upon a somewhat strange device. He had brought with him from Rheims some crayon portraits, as specimens of his ability; he chose one of these, and waited at the door of the Sorbonne till the young divinity students came out of class. He followed them into a neighbouring wine shop, where they were wont to take their meals, and pretended to be looking for some one whose portrait he had taken (he said) the week before. He knew neither the name nor address of his sitter, but thought that if his fellow-students would look at the drawing, they might be able and willing to help him. It is superfluous to say that the original of the portrait was not recognised; but the picture passed from hand to hand, and was admired; the price was asked, the artist was careful to be moderate in his demands, and some of the young men were so taken by the smallness of the sum, that they offered to sit for their portraits. The first finished and approved, other students in their turn wanted their portraits for their families and friends. This gave the young artist more remunerative work. His connection rapidly increased, and before long he was entrusted with the reproduction, on copper, of drawings commissioned by distinguished parliament men and persons of standing at the Court. At last the king, whose portrait he afterwards engraved in different sizes—as often as eleven times—gave him a number of sittings, after which Nanteuil received a pension and the title of Dessinateur du Cabinet.[36]

Louis XIV. was not satisfied with thus rewarding a talent already recognised as superior; he was also desirous of stimulating by general measures the development of what he had himself declared a "liberal art."[37] Engravers were privileged to exercise it without being subjected to "any apprenticeship, or controlled by other laws than those of their own genius;" and seven years later (1667) the royal establishment at the Gobelins became virtually a school of engraving. Whilst Lebrun, its first director-in-chief, assembled therein an army of painters, draughtsmen, and even sculptors, and wrought from his own designs the tapestries of the "Éléments" and the "Saisons," Sebastien Leclerc superintended the labours of a large body of native and foreign engravers, entertained at the king's expense.

One of these, Edelinck, had been summoned to France by Colbert. Born at Antwerp in 1640, and a contemporary of the engravers trained by the disciples of Rubens himself, he was distinguished, like them, by his vigour of handling and knowledge of effect. Once settled in Paris, he supplemented these Flemish characteristics with qualities distinctively French, and was soon a foremost engraver of his time. Endowed with singular insight and elasticity of mind, he readily assimilated, and sometimes even improved upon, the style of those painters whom he reproduced, and adopted a new sentiment with every new original. He began, in France, with an engraving of Raphael's "Holy Family," the so-called "Vierge de François I.," which is severe in aspect, and altogether Italian in drawing; and he followed this up with plates of the "Madeleine" of Lebrun, his "Christ aux Anges," and his "Famille de Darius," all of them admirable reproductions, in which the defects of the originals are modified, while their beauties are increased by the use of methods which make their peculiar and essential characteristics none the less conspicuous. In interpreting Lebrun, Edelinck altered neither his significance nor his style; he only touched his work with fresh truth and nature: as, when dealing with Rigaud, he converted that artist's pomposity and flourish into a certain opulence and vigour. When, on the contrary, he had to interpret a work stamped with calm and reflective genius, his own bold and brilliant talent became impregnated with serenity, and he could execute with a marvellous reticence such a translation as that from Philippe de Champagne—the painter's portrait of himself—a favourite, it is said with the engraver, and one of the masterpieces of the art.

When Edelinck arrived in Paris, Nanteuil, his senior by some fifteen years, had a studio at the Gobelins, close to the one where he himself was installed. This seeming equality in the favour accorded to two men, then so unequal in reputation and achievement, would be astonishing unless we remember the object which brought them together, and the very spirit of the institution.

Things went on in the Gobelins almost as they did in Florence, in the gardens of San Marco, under Lorenzo de' Medici. Artists of repute worked side by side with beginners: not indeed together, but near enough for the master continually to help the student, and for the spirit of rivalry, the excitement of example, to keep alive a universal continuity of effort. French art had been lately honoured by three painters of the highest order—Poussin, Claude[38] and Lesueur; but the first two lived in retirement, and far from France; whilst the third had died leaving no pupils, and, consequently, no tradition. It seemed urgent, therefore, in order to perpetuate the glory of the school, to gather together both men of mature talent and men whose talent was yet young and unformed, and to impel them all towards a common object on a common line of work. Colbert it was who conceived and executed the plan, who assembled all the great masters in painting, sculpture, and engraving, whose services he could command, without omitting any younger men who might seem worthy of encouragement. He quartered them all at the Gobelins, and put over them the man best fitted to play the part of their organiser and supreme director. "There was a pre-established harmony between Louis XIV. and Lebrun," says M. Vitet[39] "and when the painter died (1690), neither he nor his master had as yet permitted any encroachment upon their territory." Lebrun might have appropriated a famous saying of the king, applied it to his own absolute supremacy, and said, with truth, that he alone was French art. Everything connected with the art of design, whether directly or indirectly, from statues and pictures for public buildings down to furniture and gold plate, were all subject to his authority, and were all moulded by his influence. It was an unfortunate influence in some respects, for it made the painting and sculpture of the epoch monotonously bombastic; but to engraving, under whose auspices contemporary pictures were sometimes transformed into real masterpieces, it cannot be said to have been unfavourable.

Fig. 83.—JEAN PESNE.

The Entombment. After Poussin.

When Lebrun was called to the government of the arts, the number of practical engravers in France was already considerable. Jean Pesne, the special interpreter of Poussin, had published several of those vigorous prints which even now shed honour on the name of the engraver of the "Évanouissement d'Esther," of the "Testament d'Eudamidas," and of the "Sept Sacrements." Claudine Bouzonnet, surnamed Claudia Stella, who by the force of her extraordinary gift has won her way to the highest rank among female engravers, Étienne Baudet, and Gantrel—all these, like Jean Pesne, applied themselves almost exclusively to the task of reproducing the compositions of the noble painter of Les Andelys. On the other hand, François de Poilly, Roullet, and Masson (the last so celebrated for his portrait of Count d'Harcourt, and his "Pilgrims of Emmaus," after Titian), and many others equally well known, had won their spurs before they devoted themselves to the reproduction of Lebrun. Finally, Nanteuil, who only engraved a few portraits from originals by the director, was already widely known when Colbert requested him to join, among the first, the brotherhood which he had founded at the Gobelins. As soon as in his turn Edelinck was admitted, he hastened to profit by the advice of the master whom it was his privilege to be associated with; and, aided by Nanteuil's example, and under Nanteuil's eye, he soon tried his hand in the production of engraved portraits.

No one indeed could be better fitted than Nanteuil to teach this special art, in which he has had few rivals and no superior. Even now, when we consider these admirable portraits of his, we are as certain of the likeness as if we had known the sitters. Everybody's expression is so clearly defined, the character of his physiognomy so accurately portrayed, that it is impossible to doubt the absolute truth of the representation. There is no touch of picturesque affectation in the details; no exaggerated nicety of means; no trick, nor mannerism of any sort; but always clear and limpid workmanship, and style so reticent, so measured, that at first glance there is a certain indescribable appearance of coldness, no hindrance to persons of taste, but a pitfall to such eager and hasty judgments as, to be conquered, must be carried by storm. Nanteuil's portraits come before us in all the outward calm of nature; possibly they seem almost inartistic because they make no parade of artifice; but, once examined with attention, they discover that highest and rarest form of merit which is concealed under an appearance of simplicity.