Description:
Army encampment; soldiers; tents; battle; war
Label Text:
Jacques Callot was born in Nancy, the capital of the duchy of Lorraine, an independent state in what is now France. He studied printing in Italy and became a famed and prolific etcher before moving back to Nancy. To earn money, he made sets of small prints that could be sold as books or taken apart and sold as separate sheets. The Small Miseries of War was created for one of these books. They depict scenes from soldiers’ lives and atrocities committed against towns and travelers. The etchings were published after his death by a friend, and the title page (at top) was made by a different printmaker.
The closer you look at each of these prints, the more gruesome their subjects become. From a distance, they almost seem like landscapes, but a closer look shows the tiny figures in the miniatures. Only careful examination reveals the full horror of their actions and the details of the deaths, rapes, and thievery. The subject of the set was certainly influenced by the Thirty Years War, which was ravaging Lorraine at the time they were made. The prints are probably not, as some have argued, depictions of that war. They show war in general, without any specific references to time or place.
There are many different interpretations of The Small Miseries of War. Some argue that Callot made them as a statement in protest to war, while others say the images are simply observations. Not all of these prints actually show miseries, and none of them depict war in the traditional sense of battles or sieges. The first plate, The Encampment, shows soldiers playing dice. The next three prints portray progressively more horrific crimes committed by the soldiers. The fifth print is called Revenge of the Peasants and shows the victimized civilians violently revenging themselves against the soldiers. The last print, The Hospital, shows the soldiers, many of them missing limbs, reduced to begging after the war.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1976.54.21 |
