Jacques Callot "Les Grandes Misères de la guerr; Firing Squad" Etching


This is one of several. All from a early 18th century publication on trimmed wove paper and in good condition. Each measures 3.50 by 7.50 Inches.
Les Grandes Misères de la guerre The Great Miseries of War or The Miseries and Misfortunes of War) are a series of 18 etchings by French artist Jacques Callot (1592–1635), titled in full "Les Misères et les Malheurs de la Guerre". Despite the grand theme of the series, the images are in fact only about 83 mm x 180 mm each, and are called the "large" Miseries to distinguish them from an even smaller earlier set on the same subject.

The series, published in 1633, is Callot's best-known work and has been called the first "anti-war statement" in Western art. Les Grand Misères depict the destruction unleashed on civilians during the Thirty Years' War no specific campaign is depicted, but the set inevitably recalls the actions of the army that Cardinal Richelieu sent in 1633 to occupy Callot's native Lorraine before annexing it to France. Callot was living in the capital, Nancy, at the time, though the prints were published, like most of his work, in Paris, with the necessary royal licence. The plates still exist, in a museum in Nancy, as do seven drawings of whole compositions, and many tiny studies for figures, with a large group in the Hermitage Museum.
Callot (1592—1633), a native of Nancy, France, trained in Florence, “taking up etching and introducing the technical innovation of using a very hard ground on the plate, thus making it possible to vary the thickness of the line, modeling it along its whole course with a dependable ground to work on, he became the first specialist virtuoso etcher [this work provides] the first unromantic pictures of war, exposing its impersonal cruelty, casual violence, and senseless destruction his records of war-torture, rape, burning at the stake, the firing squad-are strikingly believable because he observed decorum, viewed events as dispassionately as only a Frenchman can, and made his figures move as delicately and precisely as deadly insects. Through his technical innovations and the excellence of his drawing he exerted an influence more profound than that of many greater artists”

Art (paintings, prints, frames)