Although Parcours is a fair in all but name, it has more the atmosphere of a festival, as people and conversations spill out of the gallery spaces clustered around the rue
Jacques Callot on to the streets and into the neighbourhood cafes (participating galleries are easily identified by orange flags and pavement markers, and the Parcours handbook carries a map).
Thus our third example is a room dedicated to violent death in the form of three of the greatest anti-war polemics in print: Goya's The Disasters of War (1810-20), Otto Dix's The War (1924), and the less well-known series by
Jacques Callot, The Miseries and Misfortunes of War (1683).
BUT AS PERHAPS the most intriguing proponent of the changed view Rabb picks
Jacques Callot, the baroque printmaker and draftsman from the independent Duchy of Lorraine, which was invaded by Louis XIII's troops during the Thirty Years War.
In scope and aversion to gore, Birk makes explicit reference to
Jacques Callot's The Miseries and Misfortunes of War (1632-33), the oldest cycle on display in "The War Room."
The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus by Grimmelshausen and Les horreurs de la guerre, the well-known series of engravings by
Jacques Callot, have left unforgettable artistic testimonies of this "European tragedy" that claimed eight million dead--in a conservative estimate--and whose settlement in 1648 was at the origin of a modem European states-system that excluded religious war between Christian nations as a matter of principle.
The latter includes Meissen style corpulent pagoda figures, characters from the Commedia dell' Arte and dwarves based on engravings by
Jacques Callot, which also inspired modellers at Derby.
The printmaker
Jacques Callot illustrated this parable in a series of 11 tiny etchings; the one reproduced here is the ninth in that series.
Many of the most prominent artists of the day are represented, including Titian, Parmigianino, Albrecht Altdorfer, Albrecht Durer, Peter Paul Rubens, Guido Reni, and
Jacques Callot. The small exhibit is organized chronologically, proceeding from the late Renaissance through the Baroque in three rooms.
On the walls are sacred scenes by
Jacques Callot and anonymous European artists, Indian miniatures, a Japanese woodcut, an icon, Barbara Westman's great illustrations, and also, thanks to the generosity of these friends, art on paper by Robert Mangold and Sean Scully.
The scene is set for the La Tour display by a room dedicated to the French graphic artist
Jacques Callot and his etchings documenting the Thirty Years War, The Miseries and Misfortunes of War.