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44. Jacques Callot (1592-1635) Le Grand Rocher
Etching, 1623, 195 x 276 mm., Lieure 512 only state. Superb impression on laid paper with the watermark of interlaced “C”s, trimmed on the platemark but complete. The image of a huge and oddly formed rock rising from the sea is a pictorial tradition dating back at least to the earliest years of the sixteenth century. But perhaps no artist has carried the idea as far as Callot, where the rocks (there are several in this print) not only support fortresses and whole villages, but a nest of impossibly gigantic and fierce eagles, the whole amounting to not merely a fantastic landscape but an allegory of belligerence. The Latin motto on the banner might be rendered as “Nor can combatants, like savage eagles, produce a dove.” Just what might have happened shortly before 1623 to inspire such an artistic statement from the nominally anti-war Callot remains something of a mystery, but one of the eagles bears a shield with the arms of Charles Joseph de Tornielle, Comte de Brion, who was the ambassador to Spain of the Duke of Lorraine in 1622. The coat of arms at the base shows the Brion shield surrounded by those of families, notably Bassompierre, allied with him. The work then hints of political and social rivalries. The great seventeenth-century collector Mariette wrote that the print was rare but one of Callot’s most beautiful. In a great, early impression, it is certainly striking, not to say bizarre. |
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