comte Henri Delaborde

FRENCH ENGRAVERS IN THE REIGN OF LOUIS XIV.

We have followed through all its stages the progress of the art of engraving, from the time of its earliest more or less successful attempts, to the time when a really important advance was accomplished. However brilliant these early phases may have been, properly speaking they include but the beginnings of the art. The epoch we are now to traverse is that of its complete development and fullest perfection.

We have seen that the schools of Italy and the Low Countries had, each in its own direction, largely increased the resources of engraving, without exhausting them. The quality of drawing would seem to have been carried to an inimitable perfection in the works of Marc Antonio, had not examples of a keener sense of form and an exactness even more irreproachable been discovered in those of the French masters of the seventeenth century. The engravings produced under the direct influence of Rubens only remained the finest specimens of the science of colour and effect until the appearance of the plates engraved in Paris by GÉrard Audran. Finally, though the older engravers had set themselves the task of accentuating a certain kind of beauty, suitable to the peculiar tastes and capacities of the schools to which they belonged, none of them had sought, at least with any success, to present in one whole all the different species of beauty inherent in the art. It was reserved for the French engravers of the age of Louis XIV. to unite in one supreme effort qualities which till then had seemed to exclude each other. While they proved themselves draughtsmen as skilful and colourists as good as the best of their predecessors, they excelled them in their harmonious fusion of whatever qualities are appropriate to engraving, as also in the elasticity of their theory and the all-round capacity of their method.

The works of the Louis XIII. engravers heralded this new departure, and prepared the way for the real masters. As soon as, with a view to securing a certain measure of independence, the French school of painting had begun to free itself from the spirit of systematic imitation, the art of line engraving proceeded resolutely along an open path, and marked its course by still more significant improvements. To say nothing of Thomas de Leu—who for that matter was not, perhaps, born in France33—and nothing of LÉonard Gaultier, who, like De Leu, principally worked in the reign of Henri IV., Jean Morin, whose method, at once so picturesque and so firm, was the result of a peculiar combination of acid, dry-point and the graver, Michel Lasne, Claud Mellan—in spite of the somewhat pretentious ease and rather affected skill of his handling—and other line engravers, variously capable, each after his kind, are found to owe nothing to foreign example. Their works already do more than hint at the new departure; but we are approaching the period when distinguished engravers become so common in the French school, that in this place we need only mention those whose names are still of special importance.

Robert Nanteuil, one of the most eminently distinguished, and, taking them chronologically, one of the first, was destined for the bar, and in his youthful tastes showed none of that irresistible tendency to the arts which is the common symptom of great talent. Whilst studying literature and science at Rheims, where he was born in 1626, he also took up drawing and engraving, but with no idea of devoting himself steadily to either. It seems, however, that after having merely dallied in odd moments with the art which was one day to make him famous, he very soon concluded that he had served a sufficient apprenticeship; for at nineteen he set about engraving the frontispiece to his own philosophical thesis.

Fig. 82.—JEAN MORIN.

Antoine VitrÉ. After Philippe de Champagne.

It was in those days the custom to ornament such writings with figures and symbols appropriate to the candidate's position, or to the subject of his argument. The most distinguished painters did not disdain to design originals, and the frontispieces engraved from Philippe de Champagne, Lesueur, and Lebrun, are not unworthy of the talent and reputation of those great men. Nanteuil, in emulation, was anxious not only to produce a masterpiece, but to invest it with an appearance of grandeur as little fitted to his position as to his slender acquaintance with the art. However that may have been, he sustained his thesis to the satisfaction of the judges; and, albeit an exceedingly bad one, his engraving was admired in the society which he frequented.34 Some verses addressed to ladies35 still further increased his reputation as a universal genius. Unfortunately, to all these public successes were added others of a more purely personal nature, which were soon noised abroad; and it would appear that, fresh adventures having led to a vexatious scandal, Nanteuil, who shortly before had married the sister of the engraver Regnesson, was compelled to leave, almost in secrecy, a place where once he had none save admirers and friends. By a fatal coincidence the fugitive's family was ruined at the same time: it became imperative for him to live by his own work, and to seek his fortune in the practice of draughtsmanship.

Abandoning the law, he therefore set out for Paris where he arrived poor and unknown, but determined to succeed. The question was, how without introductions to gain patrons? how to make profitable acquaintances in the great city? After losing some days in quest of a good opening, it is said that he hit upon a somewhat strange device. He had brought with him from Rheims some crayon portraits, as specimens of his ability; he chose one of these, and waited at the door of the Sorbonne till the young divinity students came out of class. He followed them into a neighbouring wine shop, where they were wont to take their meals, and pretended to be looking for some one whose portrait he had taken (he said) the week before. He knew neither the name nor address of his sitter, but thought that if his fellow-students would look at the drawing, they might be able and willing to help him. It is superfluous to say that the original of the portrait was not recognised; but the picture passed from hand to hand, and was admired; the price was asked, the artist was careful to be moderate in his demands, and some of the young men were so taken by the smallness of the sum, that they offered to sit for their portraits. The first finished and approved, other students in their turn wanted their portraits for their families and friends. This gave the young artist more remunerative work. His connection rapidly increased, and before long he was entrusted with the reproduction, on copper, of drawings commissioned by distinguished parliament men and persons of standing at the Court. At last the king, whose portrait he afterwards engraved in different sizes—as often as eleven times—gave him a number of sittings, after which Nanteuil received a pension and the title of Dessinateur du Cabinet.36

Louis XIV. was not satisfied with thus rewarding a talent already recognised as superior; he was also desirous of stimulating by general measures the development of what he had himself declared a "liberal art."37 Engravers were privileged to exercise it without being subjected to "any apprenticeship, or controlled by other laws than those of their own genius;" and seven years later (1667) the royal establishment at the Gobelins became virtually a school of engraving. Whilst Lebrun, its first director-in-chief, assembled therein an army of painters, draughtsmen, and even sculptors, and wrought from his own designs the tapestries of the "ÉlÉments" and the "Saisons," Sebastien Leclerc superintended the labours of a large body of native and foreign engravers, entertained at the king's expense.

One of these, Edelinck, had been summoned to France by Colbert. Born at Antwerp in 1640, and a contemporary of the engravers trained by the disciples of Rubens himself, he was distinguished, like them, by his vigour of handling and knowledge of effect. Once settled in Paris, he supplemented these Flemish characteristics with qualities distinctively French, and was soon a foremost engraver of his time. Endowed with singular insight and elasticity of mind, he readily assimilated, and sometimes even improved upon, the style of those painters whom he reproduced, and adopted a new sentiment with every new original. He began, in France, with an engraving of Raphael's "Holy Family," the so-called "Vierge de FranÇois I.," which is severe in aspect, and altogether Italian in drawing; and he followed this up with plates of the "Madeleine" of Lebrun, his "Christ aux Anges," and his "Famille de Darius," all of them admirable reproductions, in which the defects of the originals are modified, while their beauties are increased by the use of methods which make their peculiar and essential characteristics none the less conspicuous. In interpreting Lebrun, Edelinck altered neither his significance nor his style; he only touched his work with fresh truth and nature: as, when dealing with Rigaud, he converted that artist's pomposity and flourish into a certain opulence and vigour. When, on the contrary, he had to interpret a work stamped with calm and reflective genius, his own bold and brilliant talent became impregnated with serenity, and he could execute with a marvellous reticence such a translation as that from Philippe de Champagne—the painter's portrait of himself—a favourite, it is said with the engraver, and one of the masterpieces of the art.

When Edelinck arrived in Paris, Nanteuil, his senior by some fifteen years, had a studio at the Gobelins, close to the one where he himself was installed. This seeming equality in the favour accorded to two men, then so unequal in reputation and achievement, would be astonishing unless we remember the object which brought them together, and the very spirit of the institution.

Things went on in the Gobelins almost as they did in Florence, in the gardens of San Marco, under Lorenzo de' Medici. Artists of repute worked side by side with beginners: not indeed together, but near enough for the master continually to help the student, and for the spirit of rivalry, the excitement of example, to keep alive a universal continuity of effort. French art had been lately honoured by three painters of the highest order—Poussin, Claude38 and Lesueur; but the first two lived in retirement, and far from France; whilst the third had died leaving no pupils, and, consequently, no tradition. It seemed urgent, therefore, in order to perpetuate the glory of the school, to gather together both men of mature talent and men whose talent was yet young and unformed, and to impel them all towards a common object on a common line of work. Colbert it was who conceived and executed the plan, who assembled all the great masters in painting, sculpture, and engraving, whose services he could command, without omitting any younger men who might seem worthy of encouragement. He quartered them all at the Gobelins, and put over them the man best fitted to play the part of their organiser and supreme director. "There was a pre-established harmony between Louis XIV. and Lebrun," says M. Vitet39 "and when the painter died (1690), neither he nor his master had as yet permitted any encroachment upon their territory." Lebrun might have appropriated a famous saying of the king, applied it to his own absolute supremacy, and said, with truth, that he alone was French art. Everything connected with the art of design, whether directly or indirectly, from statues and pictures for public buildings down to furniture and gold plate, were all subject to his authority, and were all moulded by his influence. It was an unfortunate influence in some respects, for it made the painting and sculpture of the epoch monotonously bombastic; but to engraving, under whose auspices contemporary pictures were sometimes transformed into real masterpieces, it cannot be said to have been unfavourable.

Fig. 83.—JEAN PESNE.

The Entombment. After Poussin.

When Lebrun was called to the government of the arts, the number of practical engravers in France was already considerable. Jean Pesne, the special interpreter of Poussin, had published several of those vigorous prints which even now shed honour on the name of the engraver of the "Évanouissement d'Esther," of the "Testament d'Eudamidas," and of the "Sept Sacrements." Claudine Bouzonnet, surnamed Claudia Stella, who by the force of her extraordinary gift has won her way to the highest rank among female engravers, Étienne Baudet, and Gantrel—all these, like Jean Pesne, applied themselves almost exclusively to the task of reproducing the compositions of the noble painter of Les Andelys. On the other hand, FranÇois de Poilly, Roullet, and Masson (the last so celebrated for his portrait of Count d'Harcourt, and his "Pilgrims of Emmaus," after Titian), and many others equally well known, had won their spurs before they devoted themselves to the reproduction of Lebrun. Finally, Nanteuil, who only engraved a few portraits from originals by the director, was already widely known when Colbert requested him to join, among the first, the brotherhood which he had founded at the Gobelins. As soon as in his turn Edelinck was admitted, he hastened to profit by the advice of the master whom it was his privilege to be associated with; and, aided by Nanteuil's example, and under Nanteuil's eye, he soon tried his hand in the production of engraved portraits.

No one indeed could be better fitted than Nanteuil to teach this special art, in which he has had few rivals and no superior. Even now, when we consider these admirable portraits of his, we are as certain of the likeness as if we had known the sitters. Everybody's expression is so clearly defined, the character of his physiognomy so accurately portrayed, that it is impossible to doubt the absolute truth of the representation. There is no touch of picturesque affectation in the details; no exaggerated nicety of means; no trick, nor mannerism of any sort; but always clear and limpid workmanship, and style so reticent, so measured, that at first glance there is a certain indescribable appearance of coldness, no hindrance to persons of taste, but a pitfall to such eager and hasty judgments as, to be conquered, must be carried by storm. Nanteuil's portraits come before us in all the outward calm of nature; possibly they seem almost inartistic because they make no parade of artifice; but, once examined with attention, they discover that highest and rarest form of merit which is concealed under an appearance of simplicity.

If the "Turenne," the "PrÉsident de BelliÈvre," the "Van Steenberghen" (called the "Avocat de Hollande"), the "Pierre de Maridat," the "Lamothe Le Vayer," the "Loret," and others, are masterpieces of refinement in expression and drawing, they also prove, as regards execution, the exquisite taste and the marvellous dexterity of the engraver. But to discern the variety of method they display, and to perceive that the handling is as sure and fertile as it is learned and unpretentious, they must be closely studied.

As a rule, Nanteuil employs in his half-lights dots arranged at varying distances, according to the force of colouring required, in combination with short strokes of exceeding fineness. Sometimes—as, for instance, in the "Christine de SuÈde," altogether engraved in this manner—the process suffices him not only to model such parts as verge upon his lights, but even to construct the masses of his shadows. The "Edouard MolÉ" is, on the contrary, in pure line. The soft silkiness of hair he often expresses by free and flowing lines, some of which, breaking away from the principal mass, are relieved against the background, breaking the monotony of the workmanship, and suggesting movement by their vagueness of contour. Often, too, certain loose lines, either broken or continued without crossing in different directions, admirably distinguish the natures of certain substances, and imitate to perfection the soft richness of furs or the sheen of satin. Yet it sometimes happens that in the master's hand the same method results in the most opposite effects: a print, for instance, may exemplify in its treatment of the textures of flesh a method applied elsewhere, and with equal success, to the rendering of draperies. In a word, Nanteuil does not appropriate any particular process to any predetermined purpose. While judiciously subordinating each to propriety, he can, when he pleases, make the most of all; and whatever path he follows, it always appears that he has taken the best to reach his end.

It was not only to the teaching of Nanteuil that Edelinck had recourse; he still further improved his style by studying his countryman, Nicolas Pitau (whom Colbert had also summoned from Antwerp to the Gobelins), and afterwards by acquiring the secret of brilliant handling from FranÇois de Poilly. To which of these engravers he was most indebted is a point which cannot be exactly determined. After investing himself with qualities from each, he did not imitate one more than another; he found his inspiration in the examples of all three.

Nanteuil and Edelinck, first united by their work, were soon fast friends, in spite of the difference of their ages, and the still greater difference of their tastes. The French engraver sent for his wife from Rheims as soon as he found himself in a fair way to success and fortune; but he had also in some degree returned to the habits of his youth. A shining light in society, and as intimate with the cultured set at Mlle. de ScudÉry's as with the devotees of pleasures less strictly intellectual, his career of dissipation in the salons and fashionable taverns of the day contrasts strangely with the sober quality of his talent, and increases our surprise at the number of works which he produced. Even his declining health did not change his habits. Till the end he continued to divide his time between his work and the world; and at his death, in 1678, at the age of fifty-two, he left nothing, or almost nothing, to his wife, in spite of the large sums he had made since he came to Paris.

Edelinck's fate was very different. He lived in seclusion, given over to his art and to the one ambition of becoming churchwarden (marguillier) of his parish: a position refused him, it is said, as reserved for tradesmen and official personages, and with which he was only at length invested by the condescending interference of the king. It was probably the only favour personally solicited by Edelinck, but it was by no means the first he owed to the protection of Louis XIV. Before the churchwardenship he held the title of "Premier Dessinateur du Cabinet." Like Lebrun, like Mansart and Le NÔtre, he was a Knight of St. Michael and the Academy of Painting elected him as one of its council. His old age, like the rest of his days, was quiet and laborious; and when he died (1707) his two brothers and his son Nicolas, who had all three been his pupils, inherited a fortune as wisely husbanded as it had been honourably acquired.

Edelinck survived the principal engravers of the reign of Louis XIV. FranÇois de Poilly, Roullet, Masson, and Jean Pesne, had more or less closely followed Nanteuil to the grave. At the Gobelins, once so rich in ability of the first order, students had taken the place of masters, and clever craftsmen succeeded to artists of genuine inspiration. Van Schuppen had followed Nanteuil, as Mignard had Lebrun, from necessity rather than right. And last of all, GÉrard Audran, the most distinguished engraver of the time—whom, for the sake of clearness in our narrative, we have not yet mentioned—had died in 1703; and though members of his family did honour to the name he had distinguished, none of them were able to sustain the full weight of its glory.

One would hardly venture to say that GÉrard Audran was an engraver of genius, because it does not seem permissible to apply the term to one whose business it is to interpret the creations of others, and subordinate himself to models he has not himself designed; yet how else can one characterise a talent so full of life, so startling a capacity for feeling, and a method at once so large, so unstudied, and so original? Do not the plates of GÉrard Audran bear witness to something more than mere superficial skill? Do they not rather reveal qualities more subtle—a something personal and living, which raises them to the rank of imaginative work? Their real fault, perhaps—at least the fault of those after Lebrun or Mignard—is that they are not reproductions of a purer type of beauty. And even these masters are so far dignified by the creative touch of their translator as almost to seem worthy of unreserved admiration. We can understand the mistake of the Italians, who thought, when they saw the "Batailles d'Alexandre," in black and white, that France, too, had her Raphael, when, in reality, allowing for difference of manner, she could only glory in another Marc Antonio.

GÉrard Audran was born in Lyons in 1640, and there obtained from his father his first lessons in art. Afterwards he went to Paris, and placed himself under the most famous masters of the day, by whose aid he was soon introduced to Lebrun, and at once commissioned to engrave one of Raphael's compositions. When Audran undertook the work, he had not the picture before him, as Edelinck had when he engraved the "Vierge de FranÇois I." His original was only a pencil copy which Lebrun had brought back from Italy; hence no doubt the modern character and the French style which are stamped on the engraving. Feeling dissatisfied with his work, the young artist did not publish it, but determined to study the Italians in Italy, to educate himself directly from their works, and thenceforth to engrave only those pictures of which he could judge at first-hand without the danger of an intermediary. He set off therefore for Rome, and remained there for three years, during which time he produced several copies painted at the Vatican, many drawings from the antique, several plates after Raphael, Domenichino, and the Carraccis, and the engraving of a ceiling by Pietro da Cortona, which last he dedicated to Colbert.

By this act of homage he acquitted himself of a debt of gratitude to the minister who had favoured him ever since his arrival in Paris, and who, at Lebrun's request, had supplied the means of his sojourn in Italy. On Colbert's part it was only an act of justice to recall Audran to France, and to entrust him with the engraving of the lately finished series of the "Batailles d'Alexandre," for the great publication called the "Cabinet du Roi." To the engraver, then twenty-seven years old, a pension was granted, with a studio at the Gobelins, then the customary reward of talents brilliantly displayed. It may be added that six years (1672–1678) sufficed him to finish the stupendous task.

Treated as a friend, and almost on an equal footing, by Lebrun, who for no one else departed from the routine of his official supremacy, Audran exerted over the king's chief painter a considerable, if a secret, influence. In spite of all that has been said40 Lebrun was not the kind of man to openly question his own infallibility, nor to advertise his deference to the advice of an artist so much younger than himself, his pupil, so to speak, and consequently without the authority of any higher degree; yet he frequently consulted him, and took his advice, in private. Also (and this is significant) when the engravings of the "Batailles" appeared—engravings to a certain extent unfaithful, inasmuch as they differed decidedly from the originals—the fact that the painter made no complaint points to his recognition in Audran of the right to correct, and to his implicit submission to Audran's corrections.

In this respect Lebrun conducted himself as a man of the world, and one well able to understand the true interests of his reputation. He had everything to gain by giving full liberty to an engraver by whose perfect taste the blunders of his own were corrected, and who harmonised his frequently harsh and heavy colouring, and strengthened in modelling and design his often undecided expression of form. Thus the plates of the "Batailles," in addition to the high quality of the composition of the originals, present, alike in general aspect and in detail, a decision which belongs to Audran alone. Force and transparency of tone, largeness of effect, and, above all, a distinctly marked feeling for characteristic truths, are conspicuous in them. Not a single condition of art is imperfectly fulfilled. Marc Antonio himself drew with no more certainty; the Flemings themselves had no deeper knowledge of chiaroscuro; the French engravers, not excepting even Edelinck41 have never treated historical engraving with such ease and mÄestria. In a word, none of the most famous engravers of Europe have been, we believe, so richly endowed with all artistic instincts, nor have better understood their use.

The "Batailles d'Alexandre" finished, Audran engraved Lesueur's "Martyre de Saint Protais;" several Poussins, amongst others the "Pyrrhus SauvÉ," the "Femme AdultÈre," and the radiant "Triomphe de la VÉritÉ," one of the most beautiful (if not the most beautiful) historical engravings ever published; and, after Mignard, the "Peste d'Égine," and the paintings in the cupola at Val-de-GrÂce.

These several works, where elevation of taste and sentiment are no less triumphantly manifest than in the "Batailles" themselves, are also finished examples of engraving in the literal sense of the word. Audran disdained to flaunt his skill, and to surprise the eye by technical display, but he understood to the utmost all the secrets and resources of the craft, and employed them with more ability than any competitor. Associating engraving with etching, he deepened with powerful touches of the burin those strokes of the needle which had merely served to suggest outlines, masses of shadow, and half-tints. On occasion, short strokes, free as a pencil's, and seemingly drawn at random, with dots of different sizes, distributed with apparent carelessness, sufficed for the modelling of his forms; at others, he proceeded by a consistent system of cross-hatching. Here rough etching work is tumbled about (so to speak) in wild disorder; there a contrary effect is produced by nearly parallel furrows scooped in the metal with methodical exactness; but everywhere the choice and progress of the tools are based on conditions inherent in the nature of the several objects, and their relative positions and distances. Audran did not try to attract attention to any of the methods he employed; he made each heighten the effect of the other, and combined them all without parade of ease, and yet without confusion.

So many admirable works secured for Audran a fame such as Edelinck, as Nanteuil himself, had never obtained. The Academy of Painting, which had welcomed him after the publication of his first plates, elected him as one of its council in 1681. The school of engraving which he opened grew larger than any other, and many of his pupils became notable even in his company, and helped to increase the renown of the master who had trained them.42

Towards the close of his life Audran laid by the burin for the pen. Following Albert DÜrer's example, he proposed to put together, in the form of treatises, his life-long observations on the art he had so successfully practised. Unfortunately, this task was interrupted by his death; and, excepting a "Recueil des Proportions du Corps Humain," nothing is left us of those teachings which the greatest engraver, not only of France, but perhaps of any school, had desired to hand on to posterity.

By their works, Nanteuil, Audran, and the other masters of the reign of Louis XIV., had popularised historical and portrait engraving in France. The taste for prints spread more and more, and amateurs began to make collections. At first they confined themselves to real masterpieces; after which they began to covet the complete achievement of peculiar engravers. The mania for rare prints became fashionable; and we learn from La BruyÈre that, before the end of the century, some amateurs had already come to prefer engravings "presque pas tirÉes"—engravings "fitter to decorate the Petit-Pont or the Rue Neuve on a holiday than to be hoarded in a collection"—to the most perfect specimens of the art. Others were chiefly occupied with the bulk of their collections, and treasured up confused heaps of all sorts of plates, good, bad, and indifferent. Others there were who only cared about such as did not exceed a certain size; and it is told of one devotee of this faith that, inasmuch as he would harbour nothing in his portfolios but round engravings of exactly the same circumference, he was used to cut ruthlessly to his pattern whatever came into his hands. We must add that, side by side with such maniacs, intelligent men like the AbbÉ de Marolles and the Marquis de BÉringhen increased their collections to good purpose, and were content to bring together the most important specimens of ancient engraving and such as best served to illustrate the more modern progress of the art.

In France, however, it was not only the best expressions of engraving that were considered. On the heels of the great engravers there followed a crowd of second-rate workmen. Besides history and portrait, every variety of print was published: domestic scenes, architecture and topography, costumes, fÊtes, and public celebrations. The engraving of maps greatly improved under the direction of Adrian and Guillaume Sanson, sons of the famous Geographer in Ordinary to Louis XIII.

Jacques Gomboust, the king's Engineer in Ordinary for the "drawing up of plans of towns," published, as early as 1652, a map of Paris and its suburbs in nine sheets, much more exact and more carefully engraved than those of former reigns. Fashion plates were multiplied ad infinitum; and a periodical called Le Mercure Galant steadily produced new modes in apparel and personal ornaments. Certain collections also, destined to perpetuate the remembrance of the events of the reign, or the personal actions of the king, were published "by order, and at the expense of His Majesty," with a luxury justified at any rate by the importance of the artists participating in the work. The very almanacs bear the stamp of talent, and are not unfrequently inscribed with the names of celebrated engravers, such as Lepautre, FranÇois Spierre, Chauveau, SÉbastien Leclerc, and De Poilly.

In the days of Henri IV. and Louis XIII. almanacs were printed on a single sheet, with a border sometimes of allegorical figures, but, more often, composed simply of the attributes of the seasons. It was under Louis XIV. that they at first appeared on larger paper, and then in several sheets, wherein were represented the most important events of the year, or, it might be, some ceremony or court fÊte. In one is pictured the Battle of Senef, or the signing of the Treaty of Nimeguen; in another, perhaps, the king is represented dancing the Strasbourg minuet, or offering a collation to ladies. Of course the majority of these prints are valueless in point of execution, and are, moreover, of an almost purely commercial character; but those which are poorest from an artistic point of view are still worthy of interest, since they afford indisputable information concerning the people and the habits and manners of the time.

Whilst many French artists were devoting themselves to the engraving of subjects of manners or domestic scenes, or to the illustration of books and almanacs, others were making satirical sketches of current events and popular persons. The engraving of caricatures, though it only dates from the middle of the seventeenth century, had been practised long before in France and other countries.

To say nothing of the "Danses macabres," a sort of religious, or at any rate philosophical, satire, we might mention certain caricatures published even before the Carracci in Italy; in the Low Countries in the time of Jerome Bosch and Breughel; in Germany in the reign of Maximilian II.; and finally in France, in the reign of Charles IX. But all these are either as stupidly licentious as those afterwards made upon Henri III. and his courtiers, or as heavily grotesque as those of the time of the League, towards the end of the reign of Henri IV.

When Louis XIII. came to the throne, the wit of the caricaturists was little keener, if we may judge by the coarse pictorial lazzi inspired by the disgrace and death of the MarÉchal d'Ancre, and the Dutch and Spanish prints designed in ridicule of the French; but some years later, when Callot had introduced into the treatment of burlesque a keenness and delicacy which it could hardly have been expected to attain, the comic prints assumed under the burin of certain engravers an appearance of greater ingenuity and less brutality.

It is needless to remark that at the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV.—indeed, during the whole time of the Fronde and the foreign occupation of a part of French territory—it was Mazarin and the Spaniards who came in for all the epigrams. In the caricatures of the day the Spaniards were invariably represented with enormous ruffs, in tatters superbly worn, and, to complete the allusion to their poverty, with bunches of beetroot and onions at their belts. There is nothing particularly comic, nor especially refined, in the execution of the prints. In piquancy and truth, these jokes about Spanish manners and Spanish food recall those presently to be made in England about Frenchmen, who are there invariably represented as frog-eaters and dancing-masters. Yet comparing the facetiÆ of that period with the exaggerated or obscene humours which preceded them, it seems as though the domain of caricature were even then being opened up to worthy precursors of the lively draughtsmen of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: in fact, as though some Attic salt were already penetrating to Boeotia.

This advance is visible in the satires published towards the end of the reign of Louis XIV. The "Procession Monacale," a set of twenty-four engravings which appeared in Holland (where many Protestants had taken refuge), attacked with considerable vigour the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the principal persons who had participated in that measure. Louvois, Mme. de Maintenon, and all the privy councillors of Louis XIV., are represented under the cowl, and with significant attributes. Even the king figures in this series of heroes of the New League; he is in a monk's frock like the others, but a sun, in allusion to his lofty device, serves for his face, and this hooded Phoebus bears in his hand a torch to light himself through the surrounding darkness. The prints that make up this set, as well as many more in the same style, are designed and engraved with a certain amount of spirit. They serve to prove that in the frivolous arts, as well as in the comic literature of the day, the object was to make "decent folk" laugh, and to keep joking within bounds. In a word, in comparison with former caricatures they are as the vaudevilles of the Italian comedy to the farces once played on the boards of strolling theatres.

Every sort of engraving being cultivated in France with more success than anywhere else, under Louis XIV. the trade in prints became one of the most flourishing branches of French industry. The great historical plates, it is true—those at any rate which, like the "Batailles d'Alexandre," were published at the king's cost—were chiefly sold in France, and were not often exported, save as presents to sovereigns and ambassadors. But portraits, domestic scenes, and fashion plates, were shipped off in thousands, and flooded all parts of Europe. Before the second half of the seventeenth century, the chief printsellers (for the most part engravers themselves and publishers of their own works) were established in Paris on the Quai de l'Horloge, or, like Abraham Bosse, in the interior of the Palace. Rather later than this, the most popular shops were to be found in the neighbourhood of the Church of St. SÈverin. If we examine the prints then published in Paris, we may count as many as thirty publishers living in the Rue St. Jacques alone, and amongst the number are many famous names: as GÉrard Audran, "at the sign of the Two Golden Pillars;" FranÇois de Poilly, "at the sign of St. Benedict," and so forth.

Hence, we may mention, in passing, the mistake which attributes to engravers of the greatest talent the production of bad plates, to which they would never have put finger except to take proofs. For instance, the words "GÉrard Audran excudit," to be found at the bottom of many such, do not mean that they were engraved by the master, but only published by him. Often, too, pseudonyms—not always in the best possible taste—concealed the name of the publisher and the place of publication: a precaution easily understood, as it was generally applied to obscenities, and particularly to those called "piÈces À surprise," which were then becoming common, and continued to increase indefinitely during the following century. True art, however, is but little concerned with such curiosities; and it is best to look elsewhere for its manifestations.

The superior merit of the engraving of the masters of the French school had attracted numbers of foreign artists to Paris. Many took root there, amongst them Van Schuppen and the Flemings commissioned to engrave the "Victoires du Roi," painted by Van der Meulen; others, having finished their course of study, returned to their own countries, the missionaries of French doctrine and of French manner. The result of this united influence was an almost exact similarity in all the line engravings produced, by men of whatever nationality or from whatever originals. Thus, the portraits engraved by the German Johann Hainzelmann from Ulrich Mayer and Joachim Sandrart, scarcely differ from those he had formerly engraved from French artists: the "Michel Le Tellier," for instance, and the "PrÉsident Dufour." The historical plates published about the same time in Germany prove the same lively zeal in imitation. In them art appears as, so to speak, a French subject; and Gustave Ambling, Bartholomew Kilian43 and many more of their countrymen—pupils, like these two, of FranÇois de Poilly—might be classed amongst the engravers of the French school, if the style of their work were the only thing to be considered.

An examination of the prints published by Flemish and Dutch artists later than the school of Rubens and Van Dalen, would justify a like observation. We may fairly regard Van Schuppen only as a clever pupil of Nanteuil, and Cornelius Vermeulen as an imitator, less successful, but no less subservient. And when we turn to the Italian engravers of the seventeenth century, we find that, as a rule, their work is marked by so impersonal a physiognomy, is so much the outcome of certain preconceived and rigid conventions, that one could almost believe them inspired by the same mind, and done by the same hand.

Whilst French influence reigned almost supreme in Germany and the Low Countries, and Italian art became more and more the slave of routine, English engraving had not yet begun to feel the influence of the progress elsewhere achieved since the beginning of the century. The time was, however, at hand when, in the reign of Louis XV., London engravers who came to study in Paris should return to their own country to practise successfully the lessons they had learned. We must, therefore, presently turn to them; but, before speaking of the pupils, we must briefly mention the achievements of the masters, and narrate the story of French engraving in France after the death of the excellent artists of the age of Louis XIV.