1730. [Amsterdam], Gerret van Schagen, [n.d., approximately 1730] Oblong
- 8°. 18 original plates (including Frontispiece) with 20 interleaved,
blank pages. All plates subtitled in dutch. 19th century Hardcover . Callot's most famous suite, Les Misères
et malheurs de la guerre (the miseries and misfortunes of war, 1633),
produced following Richelieu's invasion of Lorraine during the Thirty
Years War. Oblong Large Octavo. Engraved titlepage in dutch plus 17
plates after Callot by Leon Schenk, numbered 2-18, each plate with 6
lines of verse by l'abbé Michel de Marolles. Plates 3-3/4 x 7-3/4
inches, mounted on larger leaves, titled in french in
manuscript-writing. Both contemporary marbled boards cleanly detached
(needs repair or new binding. Inside with only minor foxing. The plates
clean and fresh. Jacques Callot was a baroque printmaker and draftsman
from the Duchy of Lorraine (an independent state on the north-eastern
border of France, southwestern border of Germany and overlapping the
southern Netherlands). He is an important person in the development of
the old master print. He made more than 1,400 etchings that chronicled
the life of his period, featuring soldiers, clowns, drunkards, Gypsies,
beggars, as well as court life. He also etched many religious and
military images, and many prints featured extensive landscapes in their
background. His most famous prints are his two series of prints each on
"the Miseries and Misfortunes of War". These are known as Les Grandes
Misères de la guerre, consisting of 18 prints published during 1633, and
the earlier and incomplete Les Petites Misères referring to their
sizes, large and small (though even the large set are only about 8 x 13
cm). These images show soldiers pillaging and burning their way through
towns, country and convents, before being variously arrested and
executed by their superiors, lynched by peasants, or surviving to live
as crippled beggars. At the end the generals are rewarded by their
monarch. During 1633, the year the larger set was published, Lorraine
had been invaded by the French during the Thirty Years' War and Callot's
artwork is still noted with Francisco Goya's Los Desastres de la Guerra
(The Disasters of War), which was influenced by Callot, as among the
most powerful artistic statements of the inhumanity of war. (Wikipedia)