42. Eustache Le Sueur,
Clio, Euterpe and Thalia, c. 1643.

Oil on wood, 130 x 130 cm.

Musée du Louvre, Paris.

 

 

A further Lothringer played a very important role in French art in the seventeenth century: Jacques Callot. With a unique artistic appearance unconnected to any school, he realistically depicted in drawings, copper engravings and etchings the lives of ordinary folk and soldiers for which his The Hangman’s Tree (1630) from the series The Miseries of War is an excellent example. In addition, he gave his imagination free reign in grotesque fantasies and burlesque scenes from folk life in the so-called Capricci (1617). The German composer and writer E.T.A. Hoffmann named a particular genre of prose compositions Phantasiestücke in Callots Manier [Fantastic pieces in the manner of Callot]. Between 1609 and 1622, Callot spent most of his time in Florence, whose picturesque folk life gave him much inspiration. His main work from this time is the Fair at Impruneta (1620). Returning to France, he was appalled by the calamity that the Thirty Years’ War had inflicted on his country; he depicted his impressions in unsparing truth in two cycles with the title The Large and Small Miseries of War.