The next work in Smith’s collection to be reproduced in chiaroscuro was Rembrandt’s Descent from the Cross. Jackson was evidently well satisfied with the results, and with good reason. It is an extremely effective print, with pale yellow lights and transparent shadows. The drawing is remarkable in its feeling for the Rembrandtesque style. The sky and other parts show English white-line burin work of the type found in Mattaire’s Latin Classics and Croxall’s Aesop’s Fables. The Enquiry says (p. 45):
As this Painting was extremely favourable for this sort of Printing, he endeavoured to display all his Art in this Performance, and the Drawing of Rembrandt’s Stile is intirely preserved in this Print; it is dedicated to Mr. Smith, who generously gave the Prints to all Gentlemen who came to Venice at that time in order to recommend the Talents of a Man whose Industry might please the curious, and at least be of some Use to procure him Encouragement to proceed in other Works of that Kind.
Encouragement soon came. Smith interested two of his friends, Charles Frederick and Smart Lethieullier, and the three proposed in 1739 the undertaking of a grand project in chiaroscuro, the reproduction of 17 huge paintings by Venetian masters. This was to be financed by subscription, says the Enquiry (p. 46):
the Proposals in French, and the Conditions expressed therein, were drawn up as they thought proper, without consulting the Difficulties that must attend an Enterprize that required some years to accomplish.
Their own subscriptions were no doubt generous but Jackson found that his total income from this form of financing, together with possible future sales, would hardly cover his expenses. Other hazards made his situation even worse. War broke out in Europe before he was halfway through, and many English gentlemen, his potential subscribers, left the country. This exodus meant financial disaster, but Jackson kept at his task. He should, he said, have gone to England for his own best interests but felt that he couldn’t disappoint his distinguished patrons.
The first print completed was after Titian’s St. Peter Martyr at the Dominican Church of Sts. Giovanni and Paolo. In coloring it is similar to the Rembrandt print, with gray-green sky, yellow lights, and cool brown shadows. While attractive and forceful, it is not as effective as the Rembrandt because Titian, with his greater range of color, presented a more complex problem. Most of the prints thereafter leaned to monochromes in either browns or greens. The St. Peter was finished in 1739 and in the same year five more prints were brought to completion.
In 1740 he produced the three sheets which made up Tintoretto’s Crucifixion in the Scuola di San Rocco.[29] These were intended to be joined, if desired, to form one long print measuring about 22 × 50 inches.
Of the ten remaining subjects, the last, Jacopo Bassano’s Dives and Lazarus, was finished at the end of 1743, and the set of 24 plates (some paintings, as noted, were reproduced in three sheets and some in two) was published as a bound volume by J. B. Pasquali in Venice, 1745, under the title Titiani Vecelii, Pauli Caliarii, Jacobi Robusti et Jacobi de Ponte; opera selectiora a Joanne Baptista Jackson, Anglo, ligno coelata et coloribus adumbrata.