Existing comment:
JACQUES CALLOT
French, 1592 – 1635
Frontispiece and three plates from the Varie Figure Gobbi (Various Hunchback Figures)
C. 1622
etching and engraving
R. L. Baumfeld Collection, 1969
Various kinds of humor emerge from the art of Jacques Callot. His drawings include caricatures of fantastic imagination and graphic flourish, like the
one on the right. In several series of etchings, courtly figures of sophisticated costume and stylized behavior are rendered with subtle exaggeration and a detectable irony. In others, everyday, lowly, and even grotesque types are dignified through elegant design and refined technique. The Gobbi, a series of twenty plates plus frontispiece, is the most striking example. Rather than "hunchbacks" gobbi were troupes of dwarfs that performed in festivals of the period. If amusing then, their condition and place in society today elicit only concern. |