298
of
Caricature
and
Grotefgue
diablerie. The demon in this cafe is riding very uneafily, and, in fact,
feems in danger of being thrown. The {teeds of both are of an anomalous
characler; the iirtt is a fort of dragon-horfe; the fecond a mixture of a
lobfter, a fpider, and a craw-fifh. Mariette, the art-collector and art-
writer of the reign of Louis XV. as well as artift, confiders this grotefque,
or, as he calls it, " fantaitic and comic character," as almolt neceffary to
the pietures of the Temptation of St. Anthony, which he treats as
one of Callot's efpeciallyjisrious fubjects. " It was allowable," he fays,
" to Callot, to give a flight to his imagination. The more his fictions
were of the nature of dreams, the more they were titted to what he had
to exprefs. For the demon intending to torment St. Anthony, it is to be
fuppofed that he mutt have thought of all the forms molt hideous, and
molt likely to {trike terror."
Callot's firft and larger print of the Temptation of St Anthony
is rare. It is tilled with a vaft number of figures. Above is a fantaftic
being who vomits thoufands of demons. The faint is feen at the entrance
of a cavern, tormented b_v fome of thefe. Others are fcattered about
in different occupations. On one Iide, a demoniacal party are drinking
together, and pledging each other in their glaffes; here, a devil is playing
on the guitar; there, others are occupied in a dance ; all fuch grotefque
figures as our two examples would lead the reader to expect. In the fecond
of Callot's "Temptations," which is dated in 1635, and muft therefore
have been one of his latelt works, the fame figure vomiting the demons
occupies the upper part of the plate, and the field is covered with a
prodigious number of imps, more hideous in their forms, and more varied
in their extraordinary attitudes, than in the fame artiilis firlt detign.
Below, a hott of demons are dragging the faint to a place where new
torments are prepared for him. Callot's prints of the Temptation of
St. Anthony gained fo great a reputation, that imitations of them were
fubfequently publilhed, fome ot which fo far approached his Ftyle, that
they were long fuppofed to be genuine.
Callot, though a Frenchman, Iludied and flourifhed in Italy, and his
Ityle is founded upon Italian art. The laft great artift whofe treatment
of the Temptation I fhall quote, is Salvator Rofa, an Italian by birth,
who