The Great Hunt (La Grande Chasse)

The authors of the catalogue raisonné of Callot’s graphic work differ in dating this large etching. The sheet is dated to after Callot’s return to Nancy, France, but also to the period of the artist’s sojourn in Italy. The depicted landscape is identified as a site near Florence with the Artimino hill and a Medici villa. Its relationship to the artist’s Italian sojourn is also suggested by the expressive, deeply etched figures and vegetation in the foreground, similar to those employed in the hunting subjects of Antonio Tempesta, a prominent contemporary engraver, whose creative output flourished at the time of Callot’s stay in Rome in 1606–1611. Callot also drew movement studies after Tempesta’s print series of horses from different countries (1590). The Great Hunt takes places in a panoramic landscape setting still composed in keeping with the Mannerist pictorial scheme, where the space is deepened by aerial perspective, achieved in the individual planes through the varying thickness of the etched line. However, the articulation of the landscape space is also inspired by contemporary scenography of the Baroque theatre.