Jacques Callot

These tiny prints, from a series of sixteen, exhibit Callot’s gift for creating viable pictorial spaces in a small format while maintaining clear narrative focus. In each case, a death takes place in the center of the composition, while carefully placed diagonals, created with architecture, props, and figural groups, focus our attention toward the action. The variety of poses, figure types, and costumes within each scene would have inspired a viewer to return to the prints multiple times with a magnifying lens in order to marvel at Callot’s inventions in miniature.