. Engraving and etching : a handbook for the use of students and print collectors . brun found his best interpreter in Audran, and in asimilar way Vouet owed much to Michel Dorigny, whopractised a style of etching which imitated the appearanceof line-engraving. The work of Lebrun and Simon Vouetwas further reproduced by a number of contemporaryengravers, such as Pierre Daret, Gilles Rousselet, andothers. The broad method of line-engraving on a large scale,introduced into Italy by Villamena, and brought toits perfection by Goltzius and his School, found inFrance its principal exponent in Claude
. Engraving and etching : a handbook for the use of students and print collectors . brun found his best interpreter in Audran, and in asimilar way Vouet owed much to Michel Dorigny, whopractised a style of etching which imitated the appearanceof line-engraving. The work of Lebrun and Simon Vouetwas further reproduced by a number of contemporaryengravers, such as Pierre Daret, Gilles Rousselet, andothers. The broad method of line-engraving on a large scale,introduced into Italy by Villamena, and brought toits perfection by Goltzius and his School, found inFrance its principal exponent in Claude Mellan (bornat Abbeville 1598, died at Paris 1688). His technical skillis so extraordinary that the bravura of his style almost CLAUDE MELLAX 201 drives into the background his undeniable artistic expresses form by bold, sweeping lines, without the aidof cross-hatching, and obtains his modelling merely bywidening his lines in the shadows and making them finertowards the light. This method of treatment was de-veloped to such a height of confident skill as to enable him. Fig. 93. Claude Mellan : Portrait (detail). to undertake, in a Veronicas Handkerchief, to render thehead of Christ in a single spiral line, starting from the tipof the nose. Quite apart from a tour de force such as this,Mellan in his peculiar style obtained effects that lend lastingvalue to his work. This is shown by his large portraits,often half life-size, and by St. John the Baptist in theWilderness,Jacob and Rachel at the Well, after Tinto- 202 ENGRAVING IN FRANCE retto, etc. Particularly free and spirited are many of hissmaller portraits (fig. 93). Owing to his long period ofactivity, lasting till the end of the seventeenth century,Mellan towards the close of his career stands among hiscontemporaries in France as a survival of an antique style. The reign of Louis XIV. inaugurated for French line-engraving a period of prosperity that only came to an endwith the Revolution. This long-lasting progres
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