The first men to use etching extensively were the Hopfer family of Augsburg, who produced a great number of prints, chiefly decorative designs.
It was employed in landscape by Altdorfer, Hirschvogel, Lautensack, and others among the Little Masters. But these did little more than
Fig. 3.—Game of Backgammon. From a drawing by Ostade. British Museum.
carry on the Nürnberg tradition of engraving, through another medium. They had little or no influence on the Dutchmen.
A new and powerful stimulus, however, was to be given to etching with the beginning of the seventeenth century, by the prolific and famous French artist, Jacques Callot. Born in 1592, Callot produced a great mass of work before his death in 1638, and his etchings, by which alone he is known, had a great popularity in his lifetime. In 1624 he was invited to Brussels by the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, and was commissioned by her to commemorate the Siege of Breda, an event which also occasioned a masterpiece to Velasquez, the famous Lances of Madrid. Callot undoubtedly brought the art into prominence and favour in the Netherlands. Yet of direct influence over either Flemings or Dutchmen, Callot had little or none. His spirit was too essentially French, his method too individual, for him to be imitated by men of such different race and temperament.
In 1627, however, Callot met, at Nancy, Claude Lorraine, and probably instructed him in etching. Claude left Nancy for Italy in the same year, and in the following year etched his first plates. Between 1630 and 1663, he published a considerable number, among them some of exquisite delicacy and beauty. And from these etchings many of the Dutchmen derive their inspiration; and Claude is said to have employed men like Swaneveldt, Andries Both, and Jan Miel for inserting figures in his landscapes.
Another foreign master who exercised a widespread influence over the Dutch etchers was the German, Adam Elsheimer. Traces of this influence pervade the history of Dutch art, as Dr. Bode in his Studien zur Geschichte der hollädndischen Malerei has very fully demonstrated.
Elsheimer etched a few plates; but, with all deference to Dr. Bode’s authority, we find it difficult to attach to them the importance which he gives them. Through the etchings and engravings made from his pictures Elsheimer was undoubtedly a source of inspiration to the Dutchmen, but scarcely through the rare and by no means remarkable plates which he etched himself.
The real importance of Elsheimer, and the secret of his fascination over his contemporaries, lie in his fresh treatment of light and shade. Problems of lighting occupied his contemporaries, Caravaggio and Honthorst, but these devoted their skill chiefly to effects of double lighting and strong contrast; it was the rendering of luminous shadow and subtle tones of twilight that Elsheimer was the first to attack. In this he is a forerunner of Rembrandt, who undoubtedly took suggestions from him, and was helped by him in his own development of chiaroscuro. Rembrandt cannot be fully understood without a knowledge of what Elsheimer had done before him.