LINE ENGRAVING AND ETCHING IN THE LOW COUNTRIES, TO THE SECOND HALF OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

The history of engraving in the Low Countries really dates but from the early years of the sixteenth century: that is, from the appearance of the prints of Lucas van Leyden (1494–1533). Before that time certain line engravers, such as the so-called MaÎtre aux Banderoles, the "Master of the Streamers," and those other anonymous artists of the fifteenth century who composed the group called "the Dutch primitives," had attempted to widen the domain of the art, till then confined to the wood-cutters who were the contemporaries or successors of the xylographists of the "Speculum Salvationis" and the "Biblia Pauperum." But, whilst the German and Italian engravers were distinguishing themselves by the brilliancy of their achievement, their contemporaries in the Low Countries were producing works little fitted to compete with those of the foreign masters. They only succeeded in showing themselves more or less able artisans. Lucas van Leyden was the first to use the burin artistically, or at least to handle it with a boldness and knowledge never foreshadowed in the timid essays of his predecessors.

While still a child Lucas van Leyden had already attracted the attention of his countrymen by his talent as a painter, and his sketch in distemper, the "Story of St. Hubert"—done, it is alleged, at the age of twelve—placed him at once amongst artists of repute. Some years later the publication of his prints brought him to the first rank. He maintained his place till the end of his life; and if, after his death, the Dutch and Flemish engravers still further perfected the art he had practised, they did but follow in his footsteps and draw more abundantly from the source he had discovered.

The principal feature of the works of Lucas van Leyden, and in general of all those belonging to his school, is a keen feeling for the phenomena of light. Albert DÜrer, and even Marc Antonio, despised or misunderstood this essential quality of art. In their works there is hardly any gradation of tone to suggest atmospheric distance, and we might mention engravings of theirs where objects consigned to the background are almost as distinct as those in the foreground. It was Lucas van Leyden who conceived the idea of perceptibly diminishing the values according to their distance, of giving to the shadows more or less of transparency or depth, as the case might be, and of endowing the lights and half-lights with relatively greater force or delicacy. Reasoning so valid—based as it was on the real appearances of nature—was the principal cause of the young Dutch master's success. In his numerous engravings, however, qualities of another order are added to the merit of this innovation. The variety of facial expression, the truth of attitude and gesture, are no less remarkable than the harmony of effect, and the attempts at what we may venture to call naturalistic colour.

Considered only from the point of view of execution the pieces engraved by Lucas van Leyden are far from possessing the same largeness of design and modelling, and the same simplicity of handling, which the works of Marc Antonio exhibit, and, in a word, have none of that masterly ease in the rendering of form which characterises the Italian engraver. Nor do they exhibit the determination to pursue the truth even in minute details, and to sternly insist on the portrayal of such truth when recognised, which distinguishes the work of Albert DÜrer. They are to be specially praised for delicacy of handling, and for the skilful application of the processes of engraving to the picturesque representation of reality. Thus, instead of surrounding with an invariably firm outline objects or bodies at a distance from one another, instead of treating alike the contour of a figure in the foreground, and that of a tree, or group of trees, in the background, Lucas van Leyden altered his work to suit the degree of relative clearness or uncertainty presented in nature by the forms of objects at different distances from the eye. An unbroken line is his method for giving the required boldness to such contours as, from the place they occupy, must be strongly defined and dominate the rest. When, on the contrary, he wishes to reproduce the half-veiled lines of a distant landscape, and to imitate that tremulous and floating aspect assumed by an object in proportion to its remoteness and the amount of intervening atmosphere, he changes his touch; and, instead of bounding by a single continuous line the object reproduced, employs a series of small broken lines, superimposed in a horizontal or oblique direction; and thus, instead of a dry definition of outline, he renders with deliberate hesitation that floating quality which is to be observed in nature.

Lucas van Leyden was the first amongst engravers who took into account with any measure of success the assumed distances of his models, in order to organise in their representation a varying value of tones and a general gradation of force. This important change he introduced from the beginning: that is to say, from 1508, the year of his first dated print, "The Monk Sergius Killed by Mahomet" (which, by the way, might be more appropriately entitled "Mahomet before the Body of a Hermit Murdered by One of his Servants").26 Here, as in the master's other prints, the backgrounds are treated with so light a touch that their distance can be felt; the handling becomes less energetic, the burin ploughs the copper less heavily, as the objects recede from the front of the composition. Moreover, every subordinate form is observed and rendered with singular delicacy; every face and every detail of drapery bear testimony, by the way they are engraved, to the clear insight of the artist and his extraordinary skill of hand. His work is strictly realistic, his style precise and clear rather than loftily inspired; and we look almost in vain to him for taste, properly so called, the feeling for the beautiful, in fact, the understanding of the ideal conditions of art.

This it is which constitutes the principal difference, and clearly marks the distance, between the talent of Lucas van Leyden and that of Mantegna, of Marc Antonio, or of any other Italian engraver of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. Besides, neither the defects nor the merits of the master are entirely the result of his inclinations or his personal habits. The very spirit of Dutch art and the instinctive preferences of the future school of the seventeenth century are to be found in embryo in his works, which tend less to initiate us into the mysteries of the invisible, than to place before us the faithful image of what really exists. "It was the fate of Holland," as EugÈne Fromentin has well said27 "to like ce qui ressemble, to return to it one day or other, to outlive all besides, and to survive and be saved itself by portraiture." Taking the word in its widest acceptation, Lucas van Leyden is already engraving "portraits." It is by the careful imitation of living nature or still-life that he means to interest us: even when his models are in themselves of little worth, or, as is sometimes the case, are the reverse of beautiful.

In representing, for example, "David Calming the Fury of Saul," with what simple good faith he makes use of the first type he comes across—a stout clodhopper whom he has picked up in the street or at the tavern! No more is wanted save a harp under his arm and a slashed doublet on his body; just as in picturing the most tragical scenes of the "Passion"—the "Ecce Homo," or the "Crucifixion"—he thinks it enough to surround his Christ with the Jew peddlers or the home-keeping citizens of his native town, without altering in any way their appearance or their dress. What could be more contrary to the traditions of Italian art and the principles which have governed it, from Giotto down to Raphael? What less unusual in the history of Dutch art? Later on Rembrandt himself was to work in the same way; but with what mighty powers of invention! What a startling expression of the inner meaning, the philosophy of a subject, is united in his fashion of treatment with the realistic ideals of the national genius! In truth, it is not merely the peculiar characteristic of an individual—the indifference to, or aversion from, conventional beauty of form which is apparent in this great master, so far-reaching in moral vision, so pre-eminently sagacious and profound among painters of the soul; it sums up and reveals the innate disposition and Æsthetic temperament of a whole race.

In his brief career Lucas van Leyden had the happiness to see his efforts rewarded and his credit universally established, and of this authority and influence he ever made the noblest use. Looked upon as a leader by the painters of his country; in friendly relations with the German engravers, who, like Albert DÜrer, sent him their works, or came themselves to ask advice; possessing greater wealth than usually fell to the share of the artists of his time; he never employed his riches or his influence except in the interest of art, or of the men who practised it. He refused no solicitant of merit, however slight. The worthy master was careful to disguise his aid under pretext of some advantage to himself: he was always requiring drawings of some building or some artistic object, and thus he spared the self-respect of the person whom he wished to help, and whom he entrusted with the commission. More than once he went journeying through the Low Countries to visit engravers and painters far inferior to himself, whom he yet modestly called his rivals. He complimented them with words of praise and encouragement; gave entertainments in their honour; and did not leave them without exchanging his works for theirs, which were thus paid for a hundred times over.

It was in one of these journeys, that to Flushing, that Lucas van Leyden was attacked with the disease which was destined to carry him to the grave. Some people have attributed to poison the suddenness of the attack; but of this there is no proof. Once back in his native town, he lingered on some time, worn out and sinking, yet refusing to condemn himself to idleness. Too feeble to rise, he yet continued to draw and engrave in bed, remaining faithful till the end to the noble passion of his life, to the art he had dignified, and to that nature which he had questioned more closely, and, in certain respects, perhaps better understood than any of his predecessors. It is said that a few hours before his death he desired to be taken up to a terrace of his house, that he might once more admire the setting sun; and there, absorbed in silent contemplation, surrounded by friends and pupils, he for the last time gazed on the place of his birth, and on that heaven from which the light was fading, even as life was ebbing from his bosom. It was a proper conclusion to so pure a life—to one, indeed, of the most irreproachable careers in the history of art. Lucas van Leyden died at thirty-eight, an age fatal to more than one great artist, and which was scarcely attained by three men with whom he seems linked by a similarity of genius, at least as regards early fertility and sincerity of inspiration: Raphael, Lesueur, and Mozart.

The impetus given by Lucas van Leyden to the art of engraving was seconded, even during his life, by several Dutch artists who imitated his method more or less successfully. Amongst others, Alart Claessen, an anonymous engraver called the "MaÎtre À l'Écrevisse," and Dirck Star, or Van Staren, generally called the "MaÎtre À l'Étoile." The movement did not slacken after the death of the leader of the school. The engravers of the Low Countries, accentuating more and more the qualities aimed at from the beginning, soon surpassed their German rivals, and seemed alone to be gifted with the knack of dealing with light. Cornelius Cort, who engraved several of Titian's works in Venice in the great painter's studio, and the pupils he educated on his return to Holland, began to exhibit a boldness of touch not to be so clearly discovered in their predecessors; but this progress, real in some respects, was not accomplished without injury to truthful study and the exact interpretation of form, and certainly not without a deplorable exaggeration in the use of means.

The workmanship of Hendrik Goltzius, for instance, and still more that of his pupil, Jan MÜller, is strained and feeble owing to their affectation of ease. The constant use of bent and parallel lines unreasonably prolonged imparts to the plates of these two engravers an appearance at once dull and florid; they present something of the same aspect as those caligraphical specimens of the present day, in which the faces of Henri IV. or of Napoleon are drawn entirely with the curves of a single stroke. Still, in spite of this extremely affected workmanship, the prints of Goltzius, of MÜller, and even of Saenredam, are characterised by a comparative intensity of tone, as well as by singular skill in cutting the copper. This abuse of method, however, had not yet become general in the schools of the Low Countries. Side by side with the intemperate or daring craftsmen we have mentioned, there were certain Flemish and Dutch engravers who imparted to their work a delicacy and a reticence of expression better suited to the traditions and the models bequeathed by Lucas van Leyden. These were Nicolas van Bruyn at Antwerp, the brothers Wierix at Amsterdam, and some few others, all of them disciples more or less faithful to the old teaching, and apparently more or less hostile to the effort at emancipation going on around them. When, however, Rubens took the reins, individual resistance and impulse ceased, and all controversy was at an end. Principles, method, and aim became the same for every one. Both Dutch and Flemish engravers openly set themselves to represent with the graver the infinite gradations of a painted canvas, the delicacy and the daring, the nicest punctilio and the most summary smearing, of the painter's brush.

Never was the influence of a painter on engraving so direct or so potent as that of Rubens. The great master had shown by his drawings that it was possible to be as rich a colourist with black and white alone as with all the resources of the palette. He made choice amongst his pupils of those whom he believed to be capable of following his example in this matter; he obliged them to lay aside the brush, almost ordered them to become engravers, and so penetrated them with the secret of his method, that he seems to have animated them with his own inspiration. He assembled them in the vast house which he had built at Antwerp, and which he turned into a college of artists of all sorts. He made them sometimes labour beneath his eye; he carefully corrected their work;28 and in this way he taught them that comprehension of effect which was specially his, and his own incomparable knowledge of the right tones with which to lay in, or to support, a mass of light or shadow.

To recall the success of these efforts is to recall the names of Vorsterman, Bolswert, Paul Pontius, and Soutman: men boldly scientific in their art, who, at the first rush, carried to perfection that style of engraving which renders before all the relative richness and varied value of tones in a picture, and whose effects are identical in some sort with those of the painting itself. It is obvious that, in spite of its prodigious merits, this painting is not of so elevated a nature as that of Leonardo da Vinci or Raphael; but is it therefore less true that it is completely summed up, and its living image reflected, in contemporary engraving? Actuated by an idea of colour and effect analogous to that of Marc Antonio with regard to drawing, the Flemish engravers resolutely subordinated accessories to the importance and splendour of essentials; and in this way they succeeded in dissembling, by means of the breadth of the whole, the execution of details and even the laboriousness of the process. It would seem from the sparkling look and brilliant handiwork of these plates, that the engravers had thrown them off in a few hours of inspiration, so completely does their dash banish all idea of the time spent upon them, all sense of patience and toil. And yet these lights and shades, the sweep of the flesh, the sheen and shimmer of the fabrics, are all the result of lines laboriously ploughed; perhaps a thousand strokes have been needed to imitate an effect due to a single glaze, or given by two touches of the brush.

The engravings of the Flemish school in Rubens' time are still widely distributed. There are few people who have not had the opportunity of admiring the "Thomiris," the "St. Roch Praying for the Plague-Stricken," or the "Portrait of Rubens," by Pontius; the "Descent from the Cross," by Vorsterman; the "Fall of the Damned," by Soutman; and a hundred other pieces as beautiful, all engraved from the master by his pupils. And who does not know that marvellous masterpiece, the "Crown of Thorns," engraved by Bolswert from Van Dyck? and those other masterpieces of Van Dyck himself—the etched portraits of artists or amateurs, the painter's friends from the two Breughels to Cornelis, from Franz Snyders to Philip Le Roy?

The progress, however, by which the Flemish school of engraving had distinguished itself, soon had an equivalent in the movement of reform in Holland. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, and on from the beginning of the seventeenth, the Dutch engravers, by dint of insisting too strongly on the innovations of Lucas van Leyden, had almost succeeded in causing scientific ease of handling to degenerate into mere trickery, and spirit of design into inflation and turbulence. Amongst the first, and with greater authority than any, Cornelius Visscher set himself to stay the art of line engraving on its downward course.

Fig. 58.—CORNELIUS VISSCHER.

The Seller of Ratsbane.