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Overview
Claude Mellan was born in Abbeville in northern France to a family of coppersmiths. By 1619 he was in Paris where he studied engraving and appears also to have been active as a portrait painter. He travelled to Rome in 1624 to study with the engraver Francesco Villamena, who died not long after his arrival. However, he soon came under the powerful influence of the French expatriate painter Simon Vouet, who encouraged him to make chalk portrait drawings, which became something of Mellan’s speciality. While in Rome, he also practised extensively as an engraver, reproducing the works of Vouet and Bernini in particular. Returning to France in 1636, Mellan found an eager clientele for his restrained yet technically astonishing engravings – which dispense with cross-hatching and outlines altogether – and embarked upon the official phase of his career, with varied prestigious commissions culminating in his appointment as engraver to the king.
During this later period in Paris, Mellan mostly engraved his own work. He was much sought after as a portrait artist, drawing from life and engraving the portraits. His drawings "reveal more variety of style and execution than he showed in the engravings." He also created large religious works with geometric layouts and poses. According to Barbara Brejon de Lavergnée, writing in the Grove Dictionary of Art, Mellan's use of the single line gives "an abstract effect" and, "as an engraver he proved sensitive to the classical ideal developed by Nicolas Poussin, Jacques Stella and others in Paris in the middle of the 17th century."
Anatole de Montaiglon catalogued 400 engravings by Mellan, and about 100 drawings are known, located mostly in the Stockholm Nationalmuseum and the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg.
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In 1637, after he had left Rome but before he moved permanently to Paris, Mellan worked for the famous French scientist, astronomer and antiquary Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637). Mellan began producing a map of the Moon's surface for Peiresc, but the latter sadly died before its completion. This portrait engraving is almost certainly a memorial one, dated the year of Pieresc's death. It is a first state, before the plate was cut down. The print was later copied for the frontispiece to the life of Peiresc by Petrus Gassendus (1657).
Sources:
Art Gallery of New South Wales, https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/340.1997/
Wikipedia, 'Claude Mellan', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Mellan
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art November 2018