Jacques Callot - Life and Training

Life and Training

Callot was born and died in Nancy, the capital of Lorraine, now in France. He came from a prominent family (his father was master of ceremonies at the court of the Duke), and he often describes himself as having noble status in the inscriptions to his prints. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to a goldsmith, but soon after travelled to Rome where he learned engraving from an expatriate Frenchman, Philippe Thomassin. He probably then studied etching with Antonio Tempesta in Florence, where he lived from 1612 to 1621. Over 2,000 preparatory drawings and studies for prints survive, but no paintings by him are known, and he probably never trained as a painter.

During his period in Florence he became an independent master, and worked often for the Medici court. After the death of Cosimo II de' Medici in 1621, he returned to Nancy where he lived for the rest of his life, visiting Paris and the Netherlands later in the decade. He was commissioned by the courts of Lorraine, France and Spain, and by publishers, mostly in Paris. Although he remained in the backwater of Nancy, his prints were widely distributed through Europe; Rembrandt was a keen collector of them.

Callot's sketches of "Grotesque Dwarves" was to inspire Derby porcelain and other companies to create pottery figures known as "Mansion House Dwarves" or "Grotesque Dwarves". The former title comes from a father and son who were paid to wander around the Mansion House are in London wearing oversized hats that contained advertisements.