By the duke of Florence, Cosmo II., Callot was liberally patronised and loaded with benefits, but on his death the government had to be placed in the hands of a regency, and art and literature no longer met with the same encouragement. In this state of things, Callot was found by Charles of Lorraine, afterwards duke Charles IV., and persuaded to return to his native country. He arrived at Nancy in 1622, and began to work there with greater activity even than he had displayed before. It was not long after this that he produced his sets of grotesques, the Balli (or dancers), the Gobbi (or hunchbacks), and the Beggars. The first of these sets, called in the title Balli, or Cucurucu,[92] consists of twenty-four small plates, each of them containing two comic characters in grotesque attitudes, with groups of smaller figures in the distance. Beneath the two prominent figures are their names, now unintelligible, but at that time no doubt well known on the comic stage at Florence. Thus, in the couple given in our cut No. 165, which is taken from the fourth plate of the series, the personage to the left is named Smaraolo Cornuto, which means simply Smaraolo the cuckold; and the one on the right is called Ratsa di Boio. In the original the background is occupied by a street, full of spectators, looking on at a dance of pantaloons, round one who is mounted on stilts and playing on the tabour. The couple in our cut No. 166, represents another of Callot’s “Caprices,” from a set differing from the first “Caprices,” or the Balli. The Gobbi, or hunchbacks, form a set of twenty-one engravings; and the set of the Gipsies, already alluded to, which was also executed at Nancy, was included in four plates, the subjects of which were severally—1, the gipsies travelling; 2, the avant-guard; 3, the halt; and 4, the preparations for the feast. Nothing could be more truthful, and at the same time more comic, than this last set of subjects. We give, as an example of the set of the Baroni, or beggars, Callot’s figure of one of that particular class—for beggars and rogues of all kinds were classified in those days—whose part it was to appeal to charity by wounds and sores artificially represented. In the English slang of the seventeenth century, these artificial sores were called clymes, and a curious account of the manner in which they were made will be found in that singular picture of the vicious classes of society in this country at that period, the “English Rogue,” by Head and Kirkman. The false cripple in our cut is holding up his leg to make a display of his pretended infirmity.
No. 167. The False Cripple.
Callot remained at Nancy, with merely temporary absences, during the remainder of his life. In 1628, he was employed at Brussels in drawing and engraving the “Siege of Breda,” one of the most finished of his works, and he there made the personal acquaintance of Vandyck. Early in 1629, he was called to Paris to execute engravings of the siege of La Rochelle, and of the defence of the Isle of Rhé, but he returned to Nancy in 1630. Three years afterwards his native country was invaded by the armies of Louis XIII., and Nancy surrendered to the French on the 25th of September, 1633. Callot was required to make engravings to celebrate the fall of his native town; but, although he is said to have been threatened with violence, he refused; and afterwards he commemorated the evils brought upon his country by the French invasion in those two immortal sets of prints, the lesser and greater “Misères de la Guerre.” About two years after this, Callot died, in the prime of life, on the 24th of March, 1635.
The fame of Callot was great among his contemporaries, and his name is justly respected as one of the most illustrious in the history of French art. He had, as might be expected, many imitators, and the Caprices, the Balli, and the Gobbi, became very favourite subjects. Among these imitators, the most successful and the most distinguished was Stephano Della Bella; and, indeed, the only one deserving of particular notice. Della Bella was born at Florence, on the 18th of May, 1610;[93] his father, dying two years afterwards, left him an orphan, and his mother in great poverty. As he grew up, he showed, like Callot himself, precocious talents in art, and of the same kind. He eagerly attended all public festivals, games, &c, and on his return from them made them the subject of grotesque sketches. It was remarked of him, especially, that he had a curious habit of always beginning to draw a human figure from the feet, and proceeding upwards to the head. He was struck at a very early period of his pursuit of art by the style of Callot, of which, at first, he was a servile imitator, but he afterwards abandoned some of its peculiarities, and adopted a style which was more his own, though still founded upon that of Callot. He almost rivalled Callot in his success in grouping multitudes of figures together, and hence he also was much employed in producing engravings of sieges, festive entertainments, and such elaborate subjects. As Callot’s aspirations had been directed towards Italy, those of Della Bella were turned towards France, and when in the latter days of the ministry of Cardinal Richelieu, the grand duke of Florence sent Alexandro del Nero as his resident ambassador in Paris, Della Bella was permitted to accompany him. Richelieu was occupied in the siege of Arras, and the engraving of that event was the foundation of Della Bella’s fame in France, where he remained about ten years, frequently employed on similar subjects. He subsequently visited Flanders and Holland, and at Amsterdam made the acquaintance of Rembrandt. He returned to Florence in 1650, and died there on the 23rd of July, 1664.
No. 168. A Witch Mounted.
While still in Florence, Della Bella executed four prints of dwarfs quite in the grotesque style of Callot. In 1637, on the occasion of the marriage of the grand duke Ferdinand II., Della Bella published engravings of the different scenes represented, or performed, on that occasion. These were effected by very elaborate machinery, and were represented in six engravings, the fifth of which (scena quinta) represents hell (d’ Inferno), and is filled with furies, demons, and witches, which might have found a place in Callot’s “Temptation of St. Anthony.”
A specimen of these is given in our cut No. 168—a naked witch seated upon a skeleton of an animal that might have been borrowed from some far distant geological period. In 1642, Della Bella executed a set of small “Caprices,” consisting of thirteen plates, from the eighth of which we take our cut No. 169. It represents a beggar-woman, carrying one child on her back, while another is stretched on the ground. In this class of subjects Della Bella imitated Callot, but the copyist never succeeded in equalling the original. His best style, as an original artist of burlesque and caricature, is shown in a set of five plates of Death carrying away people of different ages, which he executed in 1648. The fourth of this set is copied in our cut No. 170, and represents Death carrying off, on his shoulder, a young woman, in spite of her struggles to escape from him.
