The "Batailles d'Alexandre" finished, Audran engraved Lesueur's "Martyre de Saint Protais;" several Poussins, amongst others the "Pyrrhus Sauvé," the "Femme Adultère," and the radiant "Triomphe de la Vérité," one of the most beautiful (if not the most beautiful) historical engravings ever published; and, after Mignard, the "Peste d'Égine," and the paintings in the cupola at Val-de-Grâce.
These several works, where elevation of taste and sentiment are no less triumphantly manifest than in the "Batailles" themselves, are also finished examples of engraving in the literal sense of the word. Audran disdained to flaunt his skill, and to surprise the eye by technical display, but he understood to the utmost all the secrets and resources of the craft, and employed them with more ability than any competitor. Associating engraving with etching, he deepened with powerful touches of the burin those strokes of the needle which had merely served to suggest outlines, masses of shadow, and half-tints. On occasion, short strokes, free as a pencil's, and seemingly drawn at random, with dots of different sizes, distributed with apparent carelessness, sufficed for the modelling of his forms; at others, he proceeded by a consistent system of cross-hatching. Here rough etching work is tumbled about (so to speak) in wild disorder; there a contrary effect is produced by nearly parallel furrows scooped in the metal with methodical exactness; but everywhere the choice and progress of the tools are based on conditions inherent in the nature of the several objects, and their relative positions and distances. Audran did not try to attract attention to any of the methods he employed; he made each heighten the effect of the other, and combined them all without parade of ease, and yet without confusion.
So many admirable works secured for Audran a fame such as Edelinck, as Nanteuil himself, had never obtained. The Academy of Painting, which had welcomed him after the publication of his first plates, elected him as one of its council in 1681. The school of engraving which he opened grew larger than any other, and many of his pupils became notable even in his company, and helped to increase the renown of the master who had trained them.[42]
Towards the close of his life Audran laid by the burin for the pen. Following Albert Dürer's example, he proposed to put together, in the form of treatises, his life-long observations on the art he had so successfully practised. Unfortunately, this task was interrupted by his death; and, excepting a "Recueil des Proportions du Corps Humain," nothing is left us of those teachings which the greatest engraver, not only of France, but perhaps of any school, had desired to hand on to posterity.
By their works, Nanteuil, Audran, and the other masters of the reign of Louis XIV., had popularised historical and portrait engraving in France. The taste for prints spread more and more, and amateurs began to make collections. At first they confined themselves to real masterpieces; after which they began to covet the complete achievement of peculiar engravers. The mania for rare prints became fashionable; and we learn from La Bruyère that, before the end of the century, some amateurs had already come to prefer engravings "presque pas tirées"—engravings "fitter to decorate the Petit-Pont or the Rue Neuve on a holiday than to be hoarded in a collection"—to the most perfect specimens of the art. Others were chiefly occupied with the bulk of their collections, and treasured up confused heaps of all sorts of plates, good, bad, and indifferent. Others there were who only cared about such as did not exceed a certain size; and it is told of one devotee of this faith that, inasmuch as he would harbour nothing in his portfolios but round engravings of exactly the same circumference, he was used to cut ruthlessly to his pattern whatever came into his hands. We must add that, side by side with such maniacs, intelligent men like the Abbé de Marolles and the Marquis de Béringhen increased their collections to good purpose, and were content to bring together the most important specimens of ancient engraving and such as best served to illustrate the more modern progress of the art.
In France, however, it was not only the best expressions of engraving that were considered. On the heels of the great engravers there followed a crowd of second-rate workmen. Besides history and portrait, every variety of print was published: domestic scenes, architecture and topography, costumes, fêtes, and public celebrations. The engraving of maps greatly improved under the direction of Adrian and Guillaume Sanson, sons of the famous Geographer in Ordinary to Louis XIII.
Jacques Gomboust, the king's Engineer in Ordinary for the "drawing up of plans of towns," published, as early as 1652, a map of Paris and its suburbs in nine sheets, much more exact and more carefully engraved than those of former reigns. Fashion plates were multiplied ad infinitum; and a periodical called Le Mercure Galant steadily produced new modes in apparel and personal ornaments. Certain collections also, destined to perpetuate the remembrance of the events of the reign, or the personal actions of the king, were published "by order, and at the expense of His Majesty," with a luxury justified at any rate by the importance of the artists participating in the work. The very almanacs bear the stamp of talent, and are not unfrequently inscribed with the names of celebrated engravers, such as Lepautre, François Spierre, Chauveau, Sébastien Leclerc, and De Poilly.
In the days of Henri IV. and Louis XIII. almanacs were printed on a single sheet, with a border sometimes of allegorical figures, but, more often, composed simply of the attributes of the seasons. It was under Louis XIV. that they at first appeared on larger paper, and then in several sheets, wherein were represented the most important events of the year, or, it might be, some ceremony or court fête. In one is pictured the Battle of Senef, or the signing of the Treaty of Nimeguen; in another, perhaps, the king is represented dancing the Strasbourg minuet, or offering a collation to ladies. Of course the majority of these prints are valueless in point of execution, and are, moreover, of an almost purely commercial character; but those which are poorest from an artistic point of view are still worthy of interest, since they afford indisputable information concerning the people and the habits and manners of the time.
Whilst many French artists were devoting themselves to the engraving of subjects of manners or domestic scenes, or to the illustration of books and almanacs, others were making satirical sketches of current events and popular persons. The engraving of caricatures, though it only dates from the middle of the seventeenth century, had been practised long before in France and other countries.
To say nothing of the "Danses macabres," a sort of religious, or at any rate philosophical, satire, we might mention certain caricatures published even before the Carracci in Italy; in the Low Countries in the time of Jerome Bosch and Breughel; in Germany in the reign of Maximilian II.; and finally in France, in the reign of Charles IX. But all these are either as stupidly licentious as those afterwards made upon Henri III. and his courtiers, or as heavily grotesque as those of the time of the League, towards the end of the reign of Henri IV.