Jacques Callot

Second edition, Nancy, 1622. Forty etchings from a series of fifty (including frontispiece and dedication); Lieure 29 (frontispiece); and Lieure 429-467 (dedication and first 38 prints of the series).
An etcher, engraver and draughtsman par excellence, Jacques Callot is regarded as one of the most accomplished printmakers in the Western tradition. Callot is credited with the invention of a hard ground for copperplates that allowed artists to achieve a greater range of tone and line in their etchings, thus greatly advancing the technical and aesthetic possibilities of the medium. Although he passed his early career in northeastern France, Callot also spent considerable time in Italy. Callot was already resident in Florence by October 1614, when he was recorded as receiving funds from the Medici court and working in the Uffizi. It was here that Callot in 1617 first produced his famous suite of fifty prints entitled Capricci di varie figure, dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici (Lieure 214-263). These sophisticated and imaginative prints combine acute observation with a taste for grotesque or bizarre aspects of life. Following Cosimo II's premature death in 1621, Callot lost court funding; he reluctantly returned to Nancy, where he re-etched the Capricci in 1622 (Lieure 29 and 429-477). The present series of etchings corresponds to this later edition. It comprises the first forty of the fifty prints in the series.