Jacques Callot (1592 - 1635)

• Was a baroque printmaker and draftsman.
• He is an important person in the development of the old master print.
• He made more than 1,400 etchings that chronicled the life of his period, featuring soldiers, clowns, drunkards, Gypsies, beggars, as well as court life.
• He also etched many religious and military images.
• Callot was born and died in Nancy, the capital of Lorraine, now in France.
• At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to a goldsmith, but soon afterward travelled to Rome where he learned engraving from an expatriate Frenchman, Philippe Thomassin.
• More than 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 during 1621, he returned to Nancy where he lived for the rest of his life, visiting Paris and the Netherlands later during the decade.

• He was commissioned by the courts of Lorraine, France and Spain, and by publishers, mostly in Paris. 

• Although he remained in Nancy, his prints were distributed widely through Europe; Rembrandt was a keen collector of them.

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