Artists Past and Present; Random Studies

by Elisabeth Luther Cary

From Rome he went to Florence, taking with him some of the plates he recently had engraved. These at once found favor in the eyes of Cosimo II, of the Medici then ruling over Tuscany, and Callot was attached to his person and given a pension and quarters in what was called, "the artist's gallery." At the same time he began to study under the then famous Jules Parigi, and renewed his acquaintance with his old friend Canta Gallina, meeting in their studios the most eminent artists of the day—the bright day not yet entirely faded of the later Renaissance.

Still his work was copying and engraving from the drawings of others. Had he been under a master less interested and sympathetic than the good Parigi, it is possible that his peculiar talent would never have declared itself. At all events, Parigi urged him, and the urging seems to have been necessary, to improve his drawing, to drop the burin and study the great masters. Especially Parigi prayed him to cultivate his precious talent for designing on a very small scale the varied and complicated compositions with which his imagination teemed. His taste for whatever was fantastic and irregular in aspect had not been destroyed by his study of the beautiful. The Bohemian side of human nature, the only nature for which he cared, still fascinated his mind, whether it had or had not any influence upon his activities, and Parigi's remonstrances were silenced by his appreciation of the comic wit sparkling in his pupil's sketches.

We see little of Callot among his friends of this period, but the glimpses we get reveal a lovable and merry youth in whose nature is a strain of sturdy loyalty, ardent in work and patient in seeking perfectness in each individual task undertaken, but with a curious contrasting impatience as well, leading him frequently to drop one thing for another, craving the relaxation of change. An anecdote is told of him that illustrates the sweet-tempered blitheness of spirit with which he quickly won affection.

In copying a head he had fallen into an error common among those who draw most successfully upon a small scale, he had made it much too large. His fellow-students were prompt to seize the opportunity of jeering at him, and he at once improvised a delightful crowd of impish creatures on the margin of his drawing, dancing and pointing at it in derision.

His progress under Parigi's wise instruction was marked, but it was four years after his arrival in Florence before he began to engrave to any extent from his own designs. In the meantime, he had studied architecture and aerial and linear perspective, and had made innumerable pen and pencil drawings from nature. He had also begun to practice etching, attaining great dexterity in the use of the needle and in the employment of acids.

In 1617—then twenty-five years old—he produced the series of plates which he rightly deemed the first ripe fruits of his long toil in the domain of art. These were the delightful Capricci di varie figure in which his individuality shone resplendent. They reproduced the spectacle of Florence as it might then have been seen by any wayfarer; street people, soldiers, officers, honest tradesmen and rogues, mandolin players, loiterers of the crossways and bridges, turnpike-keepers, cut-throats, buffoons and comedians, grimacing pantaloons, fops, coquettes, country scenes, a faithful and brilliant study of the time, the manners, and the place. Parigi was enthusiastic and advised his pupil to dedicate the plates to the brother of the Grand Duke.

After this all went well and swiftly. Passing over many plates, important and unimportant, we come three years later to the Great Fair of Florence, pronounced by M. Meaume, Callot's masterpiece. "It is doubtful," says this excellent authority, "if in Callot's entire work a single other plate can be found worthy to compete with the Great Fair of Florence. He has done as well, perhaps, but never better."

At this time his production was, all of it, full of life and spirit, vivacious and fluent, the very joy of workmanship. He frequently began and finished a plate in a day, and his long apprenticeship to his tools had made him completely their master. In many of the prints are found traces of dry point, and those who looked on while he worked have testified that when a blank space on his plate displeased him he was wont to take up his instrument and engrave a figure, a bit of drapery, or some trees in the empty spaces, directly upon the copper, improvising from his ready fancy.