Art in Seventeenth-Century France

April 3–July 22, 2018

This intimate display complements Art in France, 1598–1661, a spring University of Chicago Art History course focused on artistic production in France during a pivotal sixty-year period. Serving as primary source material for teaching and research, this presentation concentrates on work by two masterful printmakers: Jacques Callot and Claude Mellan.

Callot’s portfolio The Large Miseries of War—shown in its entirety—chronicles the wide-ranging atrocities of war showcases the artist’s innovative use of etching. Mellan’s Sainte Face is similarly famed for its technical brilliance:  the whole image is made from a single line, suggesting that Mellan never once lifted his burin from the copperplate.


Top image: Jacques Callot, The Firing Squad from the portfolio The Large Miseries of War (Les Grandes Misères de la Guerre), 1633, Etching. Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Gift of Brenda F. and Joseph V. Smith, 2000.89l. 

Above right: Claude Mellan, La Sainte Face (The Holy Face), 1649, Engraving on laid paper. Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Gift of Peter and Linda Parshall, 2011.113.