Jacques Callot

Callot lived during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), a time of constant conflict in Europe. Primarily a struggle for European hegemony, the war had both dynastic and religious underpinnings and eventually involved every major European power. It brought long periods of disease and famine and the destruction of entire regions by

foreign armies. Against this backdrop, Callot published his influential print series The Miseries and Misfortunes of War.

These eighteen small scenes expose the day-to-day consequences of military affairs, mostly off the battlefield. The story begins with the recruitment of soldiers and a

battle, and quickly disintegrates into chaos when soldiers roam the countryside wreaking havoc, pillaging, raping, and murdering. As the series progresses, soldiers are punished and executed for their crimes and peasants take revenge upon them. The final scene shows the king’s distribution of rewards to virtuous soldiers, a practice thought to stem military abuses, but one that seems fruitless in light of previous events. As a whole, Callot’s series suggests that valor is a limited virtue, and that war is no longer a glorious pursuit.

Many of the scenes depict extreme violence, but most often the violence is implied or potential and lacking in gruesome detail. The balanced compositions and

spatial recessions, the small scale of the people, and the explanatory verses distance us from the subjects represented. With these devices, Callot aestheticizes

our experience of war and at the same time graphically presents its horrors as part of our own world.