French Prints from the Age of the Musketeers.

Laminated illustrated wrappers, 4to, 30 cm, ix, 277, [1] pp, ills. 126 entries. Catalogue of an exhibition; in addition to the entries described it includes an introduction and an appendix with biographies of the printmakers. From the introduction - "Prints by the thousands were produced during the first half of the seventeenth century in France. Like our own age, that era was highly oriented toward the visual. This exhibition and its catalogue intend to reveal the diversity of printmaking from about 1610 to shortly after 1660. . The selection of prints, by fifty artists, has been made not only on the basis of quality, but also to illustrate the scope of life in seventeenth-century France. They are arranged by topic so as to make it possible to juxtapose fine-arts prints by major artists with a broader, more popular print production. The five decades covered in this book were very important ones for the development of French printmaking, and yet the achievements of that time are not very well known. . Among the graphic artists of the period, Jacques Callot is certainly the most famous, His lively prints depicting people and place', war and its consequences, have never gone out of favor, His disciple Abraham Bosse enlightens us regarding the fashions and activities of a growing middle class, whereas Claude Mellan, Jean Morin, and Robert Nantcuil provide vivid portraits of the luminaries of the time. Best known for their figura! subjects, whether religious, historical, or mythological, are the painter' etchers Jacques Bellange, Laurent de La Hyre. Chude Vignon, and the circle of Simon Vouet. A growing number of landscape etchers includes La Hyre and Morin; the most famous, of course, is the expatriate Claude Lorrain, But no less accomplished are the painters Samuel Bernard, Jean Voucher, and Claude Lefebvre, as well as Richelieu's architect Jacques Lemercier, Works by the printmakers Pierre Brebiate, Nicolas and Noel Cochin, Gregoire Hura, and Daniel Rabel are rare outside of Prance, and hence little known, ., The exhibition focuses on the printmaking activities of Paris, Despite some printmaking activity in the provinces, the capital city attracted the most and the best printmakers.This exhibition spans an amazing variety of subjects executed in a range of artistic styles. These styles extend from the late mannerism of Jacques Bellange to the restrained early classicism of Laurent de La Hyre and Claude Mellan. Simon Vouet's baroque altarpieces are interpreted by Jean Daret and Michel Dorigny, and Philippe de Champaigne's sober realist images are etched by Jean Morin. In her study of the print business in Paris, Marianne Grivel analyzed thousands of French seventeenth-century prints according to eighteen divisions of subject matter. This exhibition includes a number of examples from (he most popular categories - religion' portraiture. topography, genre, allegory, nature, history, fashion, and mythology; and samples the less numerous categories - architecture, caricature, military, pedagogy, festival, theses, and galanteries. " Very Good.…