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Updated: May 10, 2025
This is not the usual defect of critics. Like Shakspeare's samphire-gatherer, they have a dreadful trade! and, to make the simile complete, they ought to hang for it!" "Methinks it would be hard to hang a man for the sake of a simile. But which of Hoffmann's works is it, that you have in your hand?" "His Phatasy-Pieces in Callot's manner. Who was this Callot?"
Soon after the etchings were completed, designs were ordered by Charles IV, for the decorations of the great carnival of 1627. Callot was summoned to Paris to execute some plates representing the surrender of La Rochelle in 1628, and the prior attack upon the fortress of St. Martin on the Isle of Ré.
By the same artist there are also the busts of Charles Fox, the late Lord Holland, and the present earl. That of Frere, by Chantry, is very spirited. There are also, here, portraits of Lord Lansdowne, Lord John Russell, and family portraits. There is also a large and very curious painting of a fair, by Callot, and an Italian print of it.
Salvator Rosa in Italy, and Callot in France, occasionally depicted what their grotesque and mystic imaginings suggested, and Teniers gave the world witch-pictures; but for the wild and wondrous, Germany has always carried the palm from the rest of the world in art as in literature.
Some of the artist's historians have made him address this impetuous reply to the king himself, but M. Meaume reminds us that, familiar with courts, he knew too well the civility due to a sovereign to make it probable that he so forgot his dignity. Later the king tried to allure Callot by gifts, honors and pensions, but in vain.
Beneath that foggy sky, in that dirty street, under the shadow of the tall black houses, those hideous masses of people reminded one of the wildest fancies of Callot and of Goya: children in rags, drunken women, grim and blighted figures of men, rushed against each other, pushed, fought, struggled, to follow with howls and hisses an almost inanimate victim the victim of a deplorable mistake.
Looking at the portrait of Callot in which he appears at the height of his brief career with well formed, gracious features, ardent eyes, a bearing marked by serenity and distinction, an expression both grave and genial, the observer inevitably must ask: "Is this the creator of that grotesque manner of drawing which for nearly three centuries has borne his name, the artist of the Balli, the Gobbi, the Beggars?"
Then comes, in the third place, poverty in rags, the poverty of the people, the poverty that is poetic; which Callot, Hogarth, Murillo, Charlet, Raffet, Gavarni, Meissonier, Art itself adores and cultivates, especially during the carnival. The man in whom poor Agathe thought she recognized her son was astride the last two classes of poverty.
Already determined to be an artist, he had left home with almost no money in his pocket and without the consent of his parents, set upon finding his way to Rome, where one of his playfellows the Israel Henriet, "son ami," whose name is seen upon so many of the later Callot prints was studying.
When Cardinal Richelieu desired Callot to design and engrave a set of plates descriptive of the siege and fall of his native town, he promptly refused; and when the Cardinal peremptorily insisted that he should do it, he replied, "My Lord, if you continue to urge me, I will cut off the thumb of my right hand before your face, for I never will consent to perpetuate the calamity and disgrace of my sovereign and protector."
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