Equestrian Portrait of Louis de Lorraine, Prince of Phalsbourg

In luminous golden brown washes laid down in broad, blocky brushstrokes, Callot gives form to his first idea for a composition he would later etch as a portrait of Louis de Lorraine, the Prince of Phalsbourg. The embodiment of princely authority, the equestrian portrait in his hands is not a static emblem, but a vivid and breathtaking vision. Hair, sash, mane and tail are all whipped by the wind into a fury of animation as the huge muscular animal lunges forward, eyes intent and nostrils flared. The authority of the rider is manifest in every detail. Wearing heavy cavalry armor and bearing a sword, with his baton held aloft, Louis is clearly directing the battle that wages across the distant plain below.


Born in Nancy, Callot left his native Duchy of Lorraine as a young man to study art, first in Rome and then in Florence where he was employed in the Medici court until Cosimo II’s death in 1621. He returned to Nancy an accomplished printmaker, but with no immediate means of support, and prints such as this one may have been intended to flatter and cultivate potential patrons. Louis de Lorraine-Guise, Baron d’Ancerville (1588?-1631) was a central figure in the Lorraine court. His father, the Cardinal Louis de Lorraine, had been assassinated just after his birth. The infant Louis was brought to the ducal court where he was raised with the future duke Henri II, who, after he ascended to the throne in 1606, awarded his childhood friend various positions and titles. The elevation of Phalsbourg to a principality by Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II in 1624 would have conferred on Louis the title of prince and may well have been the occasion for Callot’s print, which can be dated, based on its inscription, to a six month period in 1624, after Louis’s elevation, but before the death of Henri II.


Callot was one of the most prolific and accomplished printmakers of his time. He etched over fourteen hundred plates and introduced several technical innovations, including the use of a hard ground, the invention of the etching tool called the échoppe, which had an oval-shaped tip, and the use of stopping out varnish and multiple bitings of the plate. Taken together, these advances allowed for sharper and more varied lines and a broader tonal range. In a richly pictorial graphic oeuvre that was underpinned by technical skill and methodical execution, it is surprising to find that Callot’s premières pensées for some of his most complex plates were executed with such a vigorous economy of means, often by blocking in spatial planes with varying dilutions of wash to indicate the effects of recession that he would ultimately achieve by using very different pictorial vocabulary.


In the case of the this première pensée for the Equestrian Portrait of the Prince of Phalsbourg, the boldly rendered clouds, mountains, battling troops, and billowing smoke all convey a drama and immediacy that is gradually diminished in the resolution and detail of subsequent versions. In the second drawing in the sequence (Bibliothèque-Médiathèque de Metz-Pontiffroy, Metz), Callot may have used pouncing to transfer and reverse the position of the horse, but the rider in the Metz version was made considerably larger in relation to the horse. Careful attention was given to his armor which was sketched in black chalk alone, although the head and left arm were only faintly articulated. He also added considerable detail to the scene on the battlefield.


A drawing in the British Museum (Gg.2-243 (Fawk. Add.27)) is the last in the series and the closest to the print (59.569.15). A finer-tipped brush has been used to model and give detail to the forms of both horse and rider. Finally, the head of the prince and his neck ruff were cut out and replaced with a neatly drawn version in black chalk attached from behind. For Paulette Choné, this fact, along with the barely indicated head of the Metz drawing, suggests that Callot developed the composition before settling on the identity of the portrait’s subject. However, the alignment of certain features of the rider in the this drawing (the pointed goatee, curved mustache, and arched eyebrows) with the depiction of Louis de Lorraine in the print, offer some weight to the countervailing argument. Moreover, as Louis was field marshall and general of the ducal armies, it’s difficult to imagine a more fitting subject for Callot’s spirited and powerful portrait of a military leader commanding the field of battle, short of the duc himself.

A tremendously versatile artist, Callot would spend the remainder of his career in Lorraine, creating a compelling record of life in the duchy featuring the full spectrum of its inhabitants, from princes to paupers, enjoying the refined spectacle of courtly entertainments, or suffering the brutal miseries of war. However, his formation in Rome and Florence had left a lasting imprint, and in works such as this his mastery of equine anatomy owes a debt to to the prints of his teacher Antonio Tempesta, both to his equestrian portraits, such as his 1593 etching of French king Henri IV and to his 1590 series of riderless Horses of Different Lands (Cavalli di differenti paesi), especially pl.13, A Rearing Horse Viewed Frontally whose powerful fury clearly inspired Callot.

Perrin Stein, 2013