No. 169. Beggary.
With the close of the seventeenth century these “Caprices” and masquerade scenes began to be no longer in vogue, and caricature and burlesque assumed new forms; but Callot and Della Bella had many followers, and their examples had a lasting influence upon art.
We must not forget that a celebrated artist, in another country, at the end of the same century, the well-known Romain de Hooghe, was produced from the school of Callot, in which he had learnt, not the arts of burlesque and caricature, but that of skilfully grouping multitudes of figures, especially in subjects representing episodes of war, tumults, massacres, and public processions.
Of Romain de Hooghe we shall have to speak again in a subsequent chapter. In his time the art of engraving had made great advance on the Continent, and especially in France, where it met with more encouragement than elsewhere. In England this art had, on the whole, made much less progress, and was in rather a low condition, one branch only excepted, that of portraits. Of the two distinguished engravers in England during the seventeenth century, Hollar was a Bohemian, and Faithorne, though an Englishman, learnt his art in France. We only began to have an English school when Dutch and French engravers came in with King William to lay the groundwork.
No. 170. Death carrying off his Prey.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE SATIRICAL LITERATURE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.—PASQUIL.—MACARONIC POETRY.—THE EPISTOLÆ OBSURORUM VIRORUM.—RABELAIS.—COURT OF THE QUEEN OF NAVARRE, AND ITS LITERARY CIRCLE; BONAVENTURE DES PERIERS.—HENRI ETIENNE.—THE LIGUE, AND ITS SATIRE: THE “SATYRE MÉNIPPÉE.”
The sixteenth century, especially on the Continent, was a period of that sort of violent agitation which is most favourable to the growth of satire. Society was breaking up, and going through a course of decomposition, and it presented to the view on every side spectacles which provoked the mockery, perhaps more than the indignation, of lookers-on. Even the clergy had learnt to laugh at themselves, and almost at their own religion; and people who thought or reflected were gradually separating into two classes—those who cast all religion from them, and rushed into a jeering scepticism, and those who entered seriously and with resolution into the work of reformation. The latter found most encouragement among the Teutonic nations, while the sceptical element appears to have had its birth in Italy, and even in Rome itself, where, among popes and cardinals, religion had degenerated into empty forms.