Delaborde Henri
Engraving: Its Origin, Processes, and History
Prince Rupert, so renowned for his courage and his romantic adventures, had the fortunate chance to introduce to London the process of engraving which is called mezzotint. In spite, however, of what has been alleged, the honour of the invention is not his. Ludwig von Siegen, a lieutenant-colonel in the service of the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, had certainly discovered mezzotint before the end of 1642, for in the course of that year he published a print in this style – the portrait of the Princess Amelia Elizabeth of Hesse – the very first ever given to the public. Von Siegen for awhile refused to divulge his secret. "There is not," he wrote to the Landgrave of Hesse concerning this same portrait, "a single engraver, nor a single artist, who knows how this work was done."
And, indeed, no one succeeded in finding out, and it was only after a silence of twelve years that Von Siegen consented to reveal his mystery. Prince Rupert, then at Brussels, was the first initiated. He, in his turn, chose for confidant the painter Wallerant Vaillant, who apparently did not think himself bound to strict silence, for, soon afterwards, a number of Flemish engravers attempted the process. Once made public, no one troubled about the man who had invented it. He was, in fact, so quickly and completely forgotten, that even in 1656 Von Siegen was obliged to claim the title, which no one any longer dreamed of giving him, and to sign his works: "Von Siegen, the first and true inventor of this kind of engraving." It was still worse in London when the plates engraved by Prince Rupert were exhibited, and when the English artists had learnt how they could produce the like. They set themselves to work without looking out for any other models, and were much more taken up with their own results than the history of the discovery, the whole honour of which was attributed to Rupert, the man who in reality had only made it public.
The talent of Rupert's first imitators, like that of the originator himself, did not rise above mediocrity. Amongst their direct successors, and the successors of these, there are few of much account; but in the eighteenth century, when Sir Joshua Reynolds undertook, like Rubens at Antwerp, to himself direct the work of engraving, the number of good English mezzotint engravers became considerable. Earlom, Ardell, Smith, Dickinson, Green, Watson, and many others deserving of mention, greatly increased the resources of the process, by applying it to the reproduction of the master's works. Mezzotint, at first reserved for portraits, was used for subjects of every sort: flower pieces, genre, even history; and step by step it attained to practical perfection, of which, at the beginning of the present century, the English still had the monopoly.
The methods of mezzotint differ completely from those of line engraving and etching. With the graver and the needle the shadows and half-tones are made out on copper by means of incised lines and touches; with the mezzotint tool, on the contrary, the lights are produced by scraping, the shadows by leaving intact the corresponding portions of the plate. Instead of offering a flat, smooth surface, like the plates in line engraving, a mezzotint copper must be first grained by a steel tool (called the "rocker"), shaped like a chisel, with a semicircular blade which is bevelled and toothed. Sometimes (and this is generally the case in the present day) the "rocking" of the surface, on which the engraver is to work, is produced, not by a tool, but by a special machine.
When the drawing has been traced in the usual way on the prepared plate, the grain produced by the rocker is rubbed down with the burnisher wherever pure white or light tints are required. The parts that are not flattened by the burnisher print as darks; and these darks are all the deeper and more velvety as they result from the grain itself – that is to say, from a general preparation specially adapted to catch the ink – and are by no means composed, as in line engraving, of furrows more or less crowded or cross-hatched.
Mezzotint engraving has, in this respect, the advantage of other processes; in all others it is decidedly inferior. The rough grain produced on a plate by the rocker, and the mere scraping by which it is obliterated or modified, are technical hindrances to decided drawing: only with graver or point is it possible to make outlines of perfect accuracy. Again, precision, delicacy of modelling, and perfect finish in detail are impossible to the scraper. Mezzotint, in fine, is suitable for the translation of pictures where the light is scarce and concentrated, but is powerless to render work quiet in aspect and smooth in effect.
English engravers, then, had begun to rank as artists. Callot, and, after him, other French engravers already remarkably skilful, had succeeded in founding a school which was soon to be honoured by the presence of true masters; Italy and Germany were deteriorating steadily. Meanwhile, what was going on elsewhere? In Spain there was a brilliant galaxy of painters, some of whom, like Ribera, have left etchings; but there were few or no professional engravers. In Switzerland, Jost Amman of Zurich (1539–1591) was succeeded by a certain number of illustrator-engravers, heirs of his superficial cleverness and of his commercial rather than artistic ideas: engravers, by the way, who are commonly confounded with the German masters of the same epoch. Lastly, the few Swedes or Poles who studied art, whether in Flanders or Germany, never succeeded in popularising the taste for it in their own countries; only for form's sake need they be mentioned.
The first of the two great phases of the history of engraving ends about the middle of the seventeenth century. We have seen that the influence of Marc Antonio, though combated at first by the influence of Albert Dürer, easily conquered, and prevailed without a rival in Italy, Germany, and even France, until the appearance of Callot and his contemporaries. Meanwhile, in the Low Countries the art presented a physiognomy of its own, developed slowly, and ended by undergoing a thorough, but brief, transformation under the authority of Rubens. The Flemish school was soon to be absorbed in that of France, and the second period, which may be termed the French, to begin in the history of engraving.
Were it permissible, on the authority of examples given elsewhere, to compare a multitude of men separated by differences of epoch and endowment, we might arrange the old engravers in the order adopted for a group of much greater artists by the painters of the "Apotheosis of Homer" and the "Hemicycle of the Palais des Beaux-Arts." Let us regard them in our mind's eye as a master might figure them. In the centre is Finiguerra, the father of the race; next to him, on the one side, are the Master of 1466, Martin Schongauer, and Albert Dürer; on the other, Mantegna and Marc Antonio, surrounded, like the three German masters, by their disciples, amongst whom they maintain an attitude of command. Between the two groups, but rather on the German side, is Lucas van Leyden, first in place, as by right, among the Dutchmen. Below these early masters, who wear upon their brows that expression of severity which distinguishes their work, comes the excited crowd of daring innovators, whose merit is in the spirit of their style – Bolswert, Vorsterman, Pontius, Cornelius Visscher, Van Dalen, and their rivals. Rembrandt muses apart, sombre, and as though shrouded in mystery. Lastly, in the middle distance, are seen the merely clever engravers: the Dutch Little Masters, Callot, Hollar, and Israel Silvestre.
If, on the other hand, we must abandon this realm of fancy for the regions of fact, we might sum up the results of past progress by instancing a few prints of perfect beauty. Our own selection would be Mantegna's "Entombment;" Marc Antonio's "Massacre of the Innocents;" the "Death of the Virgin," by Martin Schongauer; Dürer's "Melancholia;" the "Calvary" of Lucas van Leyden; Rembrandt's "Christ Healing the Sick;" Bolswert's "Crown of Thorns;" the "Portrait of Rubens," by Paul Pontius, or the "Gellius de Bouma" of Cornelius Visscher; and finally, Callot's "Florentine Fair," or "Garden at Nancy," and the "Bouvier," or, better still, the "Soleil Levant" of Claude Lorraine. Happy the owner of this selection of masterpieces: the man who, better inspired than the majority of his kind, has preferred a few gems to an overgrown and unwieldy collection.
CHAPTER VII.
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.
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.
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.