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Overview
French printmaker Jacques Callot (1592-1635) worked first in Rome and then in Florence, where he was also exposed to the Italian Mannerist style. In his own prints he combined the sophisticated techniques and exaggerations of Mannerism with his own witty and acute observation.
During his relatively short lifetime, Callot produced over 1400 etchings. His example encouraged other artists to become specialist etchers, instead of painters who etched on the side. Callot was one of the first printmakers to offer his original compositions for collectors' portfolios. The print was no longer a secondary medium conveying information about paintings, but an aesthetic experience in its own right.
La grande chasse shows Callot's unique etching style which used starkly contrasting thick and thin lines. It was widely imitated, and has led to Callot being described as 'the first inventive international printmaker' who 'culled something from everywhere and imparted something to all subsequent etching and engraving'.
Indeed, the print is a famous technical showpiece, both in terms of compressing a grand hunting scene, worthy of a tapestry, into a small print, but also in reflecting Callot's highly influential etching technique, which used contrasting lines as stated above. In this wide, horizontal composition, Callot depicted many hunting procedures and devices, including a net in the middle distance, set to trap the stag being chased towards it in the centre by a large group of horsemen and dogs. All eyes follow the downward slope of the landscape, guided by the pointing figure of a horseman on the right, the angled spears of two figures on the left, and a runaway horse in the near middle distance. Callot divided the picture plane into six principal tonal values using several stages of etching, darkly framing the foreground with heavier, broader, and denser lines and intimating distant atmosphere with the delicate, lightly-bitten lines of the faraway hilltop castle.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Callot http://risdmuseum.org/art_design/objects/2717_the_stag_hunt_la_chasseDr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art June 2017