Selections from the Collection

Jacques Callot

Jacques Callot: Untitled (old beggar woman facing left), from the series Les gueux, 1620–30; etching; 9 x 5 9/16 in.; gift of Dr. and Mrs. Werner Z. Hirsch.



Jacques Callot: Untitled (woman with hands covered), from the series Les gueux, 1620–30; etching; 8 x 5 1/16 in.; gift of Dr. and Mrs. Werner Z. Hirsch.

Two cases of prints in Gallery 5 highlight the work of the masterful French etcher Jacques Callot (1592–1635). The well-born Callot was a precocious talent—early biographies have him running away to Rome at age twelve (with gypsies!) to study engraving—and also a technological innovator. The harder “ground” he developed adhered more tightly to the metal printing plate than plain wax; when dipped in acid, the lines that had been scratched through this ground would be etched into the surface of the metal more reliably, allowing for greater detail and richer tonalities of black and gray.

In the late works on display, Callot makes full use of these technical possibilities in the intricate miniature scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary and the bold, authoritative sweep of a saint’s draperies. Nowhere, however, is his delicacy of touch used to more compelling effect than in his series Les gueux, a compassionate, clear-eyed depiction of the ubiquitous beggars that crowded the streets of seventeenth-century Europe, when up to a quarter of the population was homeless.

Lynne Kimura
Academic Liaison