Les Miseres et les Mal-heurs de la Guerre [...]

Bookseller Notes

A handsome volume containing Callot's best known suite of engravings, which has been described as the first antiwar statement in European Art (Sutherland Harris, p. 258). Also known as Les Grandes Misres de la Guerre, to distinguish it from the earlier Petites Misres, it is characterised by the finesse of line for which Callot was celebrated, and for the unflinching brutality of its imagery. The evocative scenes show soldiers rampaging through town and country, through churches and convtents, before being variously arrested and executed by their superiors, lynched by peasants, or surviving - maimed - to live as beggars. Pointedly, the officer class escape this fate, receiving royal honours. Jacques Callot (1592-1635) belonged to a noble family in Lorraine - then an independent principality - which was invaded by the French during 1633, when this set was produced. Along with Francisco Goya's Los Desastres de la Guerra (1863), which was directly influenced by Callot, it is onsidered one of the most powerful artistic statements of the inhumanity of war. This is the first edition, third state, as denoted by the arabic numeration and the six line verse by l'Abbe Marolle set in three two-line columns beneath each etching, except at the title. The Israel imprint and royal privilege do not appear on the individual platesis also See: Ann Sutherland Harris,Seventeenth-Century Art & Architecture (2005).