The French seventeenth-century artist Jacques Callot
(1592-1635) is one of the first artists to work exclusively as a printmaker and attain fame in his own lifetime. His oeuvre
encompasses nearly 1400 prints and over 2000 drawings produced over less than three decades. His career is generally
divided into his Italian period (1608-1621) and his French period (1621-1635).
Legend has it that the little Jacques Callot
so wanted to be an artist in Rome that he twice ran away from his wealthy parents' home at the Duke of Lorraine's court. By
1608 he had apprenticed to Paris engraver Philippe Thomassin, learning line engraving and studying mannerist work in
churches.
Callot's career really began in Florence in 1612, however, when he began working for the sophisticated, exquisitely elegant
Medici court . With a Mannerist's flair for wit and incisive detail, Callot drew and etched fairs, festivals, commedia
dell'arte characters, homeless, courtiers, and hunchbacks (he was fascinated by the grotesque). After Duke Cosimo II's
death in 1621, Callot returned to Nancy, where he worked for the Lorraine court depicting fanciful scenes of daily life (genre). None of his painted decoration
survives.
Back in France, Callot approached his work with a “born again” passion. He
added poignant religious subjects, siege compositions, and thoughtful landscape drawings and etchings to his repertoire. In
1633, inspired by the Thirty Years War and Cardinal Richelieu's invasion of Lorraine,
Callot created a series of prints called the Miseries of War. His devastating appraisals of human cruelty and folly
were an insiration for Goya ‘s Disasters of War almost two hundred years later.
