Vie de Jacques Callot, Graveur Lorrain (1592-1635)
Paris: Imprimerie Nationale / Société pour l'Étude de la Gravure Française, 1912. Limited First edition. Hardcover. 1/400. Large quarto (11 1/4 x 9 1/2"). [10], 262, [2]pp. Uncut. Contemporary 3/4 morocco over marbled paper covered boards, with gold lettering to spine. Raised bands. Top edge gilt. Marbled endpapers. Ribbon marker. Original printed wrappers bound in, with red and black lettering and publisher's device to front cover and title page. Frontispiece portrait of Jacques Callot after a painting by Sir Anthony van Dyck. Arches paper watermarked "J. Perrigo."
Splendidly illustrated with 9 in-text figs and 14 tissue-guarded plates, this monograph on the life of Jacques Callot brings a valuable light on an artist who truly brought printmaking to its heights. Throughout his career, Callot worked exclusively as a printmaker and produced more than 1400 plates, almost all of which he designed and which earned him fame across Europe. Regarded as one of the exceptional artists of his time, Callot has nevertheless been a fairly minor figure in the art history books, no matter that some of his impressions of the horrors of war are as powerful as Goya’s and that his reflections on the pleasures of the theater and the fairground rival those of Rubens and Watteau. Within the frequently Lilliputian dimensions of his prints - some of the most famous ones are little more than two inches high - Callot represented beggars, gypsies, soldiers, actors, and the ladies and gentlemen of the court. He also etched Biblical stories, royal festivals, hunts, battles, gardens, landscapes, and seascapes.
Binding rubbed along spine and edges. Previous owner's bookplate on inside of front cover. Text in French. Binding in overall good-, interior in very good condition. g- to vg. Item #41168
Price: $175.00