Jacques Bellange (c. 1575–1616) was an artist and printmaker from the

Duchy of Lorraine The Duchy of Lorraine (french: Lorraine ; german: Lothringen ), originally Upper Lorraine, was a duchy now included in the larger present-day region of Lorraine in northeastern France. Its capital was Nancy. It was founded in 959 following th ...

(then independent but now part of

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

) whose

etching Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types ...

s and some drawings are his only securely identified works today. They are among the most striking

Northern Mannerist Northern Mannerism is the form of Mannerism found in the visual arts north of the Alps in the 16th and early 17th centuries. Styles largely derived from Italian Mannerism were found in the Netherlands and elsewhere from around the mid-century, e ...

old master prints, mostly on Catholic religious subjects, and with a highly individual style. He worked for fourteen years in the capital, Nancy as court painter to two

Dukes of Lorraine The rulers of Lorraine have held different posts under different governments over different regions, since its creation as the kingdom of Lotharingia by the Treaty of Prüm, in 855. The first rulers of the newly established region were kings of ...

, before dying at the age of about forty, and almost all his prints were produced in the three or four years before his death. None of his paintings are known to have survived, but the prints have been known to collectors since shortly after his death, though they were out of critical favour for most of this period. In the 20th century they have been much more highly regarded, although Bellange is still not a well-known figure.

Life

Bellange's place of birth and family background are unknown, according to Griffiths and Hartley, but most French sources assume he was born in the Bassigny region, also apparently known as "Bellange", in the south of the duchy around the fortified village of La Mothe, where he is first documented in 1595. The village was completely destroyed in 1645 by French armies after a siege during their conquest of Lorraine, and no longer exists. He is recorded in 1595 as living "at present" in La Mothe; he had travelled to Nancy, where he took on an apprentice, and it is inferred that he must have been at least 20 to do so, hence his approximate date of birth. The complete absence of mentions in the record of his family, his rapid rise from 1602 in the court at Nancy, and his use of the title of "knight" has led to speculation that he may have been the illegitimate son of some court personage.Griffiths and Hartley, 20 Virgin seated, supporting the body of Christ AN00047821 001 l

Virgin seated, supporting the body of Christ AN00047821 001 l

After the 1595 record there is a complete gap until 1602, although the destruction of La Mothe is likely to be one reason for this. Scholars have speculated that Bellange travelled either in this period or before 1595. The connection with Crispijn de Passe in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

(see below) may mean that he had visited that city. In eight of Bellange's prints, his signature describes him as "eques" or "knight", but it seems clear that this title was not given by the Dukes of Lorraine. It is not impossible that he had acquired it at some other court during this period, and returned to Lorraine around 1602 with the prestige of an artist with international experience. He appears employed as a court painter in Nancy in 1602, and thereafter appears regularly in the court accounts until 1616, the year of his death. After completing his first commission, to paint a room in the palace, he was taken on with a salary of 400 francs in 1603, twice what any previous court painter had been paid, and given the second rank out of the five court painters, with the additional function or title of ''

valet A valet or varlet is a male servant who serves as personal attendant to his employer. In the Middle Ages and Ancien Régime, valet de chambre was a role for junior courtiers and specialists such as artists in a royal court, but the term "valet ...

de garderobe''. Some jobs for the court attracted extra payments: in 1606 he repainted, for 1,200 francs, the ''Galerie des Cerfs'', the main public space of the palace, used as a law court among other things. He appears to have repeated the previous scheme of hunting scenes. In the same year he was commissioned (1,700 francs, shared) to execute, but not design, a temporary triumphal arch for the royal entry of Marguerite Gonzaga, the new wife of Henri, the heir to the duchy, who inherited upon the death of his father Charles in 1608. This was Lorraine's first classical triumphal arch, surmounted by a statue of

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...

in honour of the bride's

Mantua Mantua ( ; it, Mantova ; Lombard and la, Mantua) is a city and '' comune'' in Lombardy, Italy, and capital of the province of the same name. In 2016, Mantua was designated as the Italian Capital of Culture. In 2017, it was named as the Eur ...

n home. Bellange also produced a car for use in the ballet produced for the celebrations, with 12 papier-maché

putti A putto (; plural putti ) is a figure in a work of art depicted as a chubby male child, usually naked and sometimes winged. Originally limited to profane passions in symbolism,Dempsey, Charles. ''Inventing the Renaissance Putto''. University of ...

. In March 1608, just before the old duke's death, Bellange was given 135 francs for a trip to France to see the new royal art commissions, his only documented travel outside Lorraine. He is not recorded as working on the funeral arrangements in mid-May, so was probably still away. His largest recorded commission, for 4,000 francs in 1610, was to decorate the ''Salle Neuf'' of the palace with scenes from

Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...

. In 1612 he married Claude Bergeron, the 17-year-old daughter of a prominent Nancy

apothecary ''Apothecary'' () is a mostly archaic term for a medical professional who formulates and dispenses '' materia medica'' (medicine) to physicians, surgeons, and patients. The modern chemist (British English) or pharmacist (British and North Amer ...

, with whom he had three sons. The

dowry A dowry is a payment, such as property or money, paid by the bride's family to the groom or his family at the time of marriage. Dowry contrasts with the related concepts of bride price and dower. While bride price or bride service is a payment ...

was 6,000 francs, with a promise that the Bergerons' country house would pass to the couple. The exact date and cause of Bellange's death in 1616 are unknown. His widow remarried another courtier in 1620 and had a further five children, living into the 1670s. She seems to have neglected her sons from her first marriage, two of whom appear to have died young; Henri, the oldest, was apprenticed in 1626 to

Claude Deruet Claude Deruet (1588–1660) was a famous French Baroque painter of the 17th century, from the city of Nancy. Biography Deruet was an apprentice to Jacques Bellange, the official court painter to Charles III, Duke of Lorraine. He was in Rome b ...

, his father's old apprentice, and was a minor painter, latterly in Paris.

Etchings

Jacques Bellange - The Adoration of the Magi - Google Art Project

It is generally agreed that 47 or 48 etchings by Bellange survive, and along with a number of drawings these are possibly all that remain of his art today. He probably branched into etching to spread his reputation beyond the rather small world of Nancy, and was successful in this. His style is a very personal version of the Netherlandish or

Northern Mannerism Northern Mannerism is the form of Mannerism found in the visual arts north of the Alps in the 16th and early 17th centuries. Styles largely derived from Italian Mannerism were found in the Netherlands and elsewhere from around the mid-century, e ...

of artists like

Bartholomeus Spranger Bartholomeus Spranger or Bartholomaeus SprangerBartholomeus Spranger
at the

and

Hendrik Goltzius Hendrick Goltzius, or Hendrik, (; ; January or February 1558 – 1 January 1617) was a German-born Dutch printmaker, draftsman, and painter. He was the leading Dutch engraver of the early Baroque period, or Northern Mannerism, lauded for his s ...

, but using a technique derived from Italian etchers like

Federico Barocci Federico Barocci (also written ''Barozzi'')(c. 1535 in Urbino – 1612 in Urbino) was an Italian Renaissance painter and printmaker. His original name was Federico Fiori, and he was nicknamed Il Baroccio. His work was highly esteemed and inf ...

and

Ventura Salimbeni Ventura di Archangelo Salimbeni (also later called Bevilacqua; 20 January 1568 – 1613) was an Italian Counter-Maniera painter and printmaker highly influenced by the ''vaghezza'' and sensual reform of Federico Barocci. Biography Salimb ...

rather than Netherlandish

engraving Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an in ...

. Sue Welsh Reed relates his style and technique more to the prints of the

School of Fontainebleau The School of Fontainbleau (french: École de Fontainebleau) (c. 1530 – c. 1610) refers to two periods of artistic production in France during the late Renaissance centered on the royal Palace of Fontainebleau that were crucial in forming the No ...

, while to

A. Hyatt Mayor Alpheus Hyatt Mayor (1901–1980) was an American art historian and curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a leading figure in the study of prints, both old master prints and popular prints. A. Hyatt Mayor's father was marine biologist Alfre ...

he combined Italian elements "with an all-out emotion that is German and an intricate feminine elegance that is wholly French". Anthony Blunt followed a line of 20th-century criticism that saw his work as:

the last in a long evolution of that particular type of Mannerism in which a private mystical form of religious emotion is expressed in terms which appear at first sight to be merely those of empty aristocratic elegance. The founder of this tradition was
Parmigianino Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola (11 January 150324 August 1540), also known as Francesco Mazzola or, more commonly, as Parmigianino (, , ; "the little one from Parma"), was an Italian Mannerist painter and printmaker active in Florence, Rome, B ...
, who invented many of the formulas used by his successors, such as the elongation of the figures, the small heads on long necks, the sweeping draperies, the strained, nervous poses of the hands, and the sweet ecstatic smile which those of Protestant upbringing find it hard not to think of as sickly and insincere, but which incorporates a particular kind of mystical feeling.

There are no concessions to realism in his work. Female figures predominate; most, but not the Virgin, dressed in a fantasy mixture of contemporary court fashion and antique dress. Men mostly wear fantastical versions of Ancient Roman parade uniforms mixed with Oriental elements, including some of the most elaborate footwear seen in art. His work for the court in designing costumes for

masque The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment that flourished in 16th- and early 17th-century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio (a public version of the masque was the pageant). A masq ...

s and ballets may be an influence here, and it has been suggested that the four female "gardeners" are connected with specific costume designs. Regular special effects in his compositions include manipulation of space, and many large figures seen from behind in the foreground of works; both the Apostles and Magi sets of single figures include ones seen only from behind, with no face visible. Technically, he makes much use of

stippling Stippling is the creation of a pattern simulating varying degrees of solidity or shading by using small dots. Such a pattern may occur in nature and these effects are frequently emulated by artists. Art In printmaking, stipple engraving is ...

and burnishing to achieve effects of light and to convey texture. Hurdy-gurdy player attacking a pilgrim AN00047867 001 l

His two prints with a

hurdy-gurdy The hurdy-gurdy is a string instrument that produces sound by a hand-crank-turned, rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar to those of a vi ...

man come from a very different world of

genre works Genre art is the pictorial representation in any of various media of scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, work, and street scenes. Such representations (also called genre works, ...

and realism, and the violence of the larger one was original at the time, anticipating themes to be taken up in later decades by the slightly younger Lorraine artist

Jacques Callot Jacques Callot (; – 1635) was a baroque printmaker and draftsman from the Duchy of Lorraine (an independent state on the north-eastern border of France, southwestern border of Germany and overlapping the southern Netherlands). He is an impor ...

and others. His first venture into etching seems to be a single self-portrait inserted into a large print of the ceremonial entry of the new Duke Henri into Nancy in 1610. The established printmaker Friedrich Brentel and his young assistant Matthias Merian—later a major producer of maps and town views—had been brought in to produce a series of prints depicting the funeral of the old Duke Charles in 1608, and the celebrations for the new duke after mourning was complete. Plate 10 of the series shows a large group of mounted courtiers as part of a procession, and it was realized in 1971 that one of the figures, and his horse, is etched in a completely different style, that can be related to Bellange's other prints. It is now generally agreed that Bellange persuaded Brentel (or vice versa) that he should portray himself. This would have been in 1611, and a bookplate that looks to be an early effort is dated 1613; after that, none of his prints are dated, although most are signed. Scholars have attempted a tentative chronology for the prints, essentially within the period from 1613 to 1616, based mainly on Bellange's increasing confidence and skill with the medium of etching, which was usually supplemented by a limited amount of

and, in a few cases, touches of

drypoint Drypoint is a printmaking technique of the intaglio family, in which an image is incised into a plate (or "matrix") with a hard-pointed "needle" of sharp metal or diamond point. In principle, the method is practically identical to engraving. The ...

. However, Griffiths and Hartley are too cautious to do so, noting that differences of technique can arise as much from the different requirements of individual plates as developing skill. Sue Welsh Reed, on the other hand, makes many comments on the assumed place of individual prints in a chronology, placing works like the ''Annunciation'' and ''Pietá'' among the last, and also seeing an increasing skill in composition as the sequence progresses. Bellange's widow is recorded as owning 22 of his etched plates in 1619; probably these included the 18 that were later re-issued by the Parisian publisher Jean Le Blond, who added his name to the plate. This suggests that in his lifetime, Bellange supervised the printing of impressions himself; from at least 1615 there was a printing press for intaglio copperplates (a different piece of equipment to a book press) in Nancy. Distribution of prints through a network of dealers across Europe was already becoming rather efficient. Matthias Merian, whom Bellange must have known from his visit in 1610/11, produced 11 pirate copies of Bellange prints for a publisher in Strasbourg, probably as early as 1615—a standard sign of a successful print in those days. An impression of Bellange's ''Pieta'' records that it was bought by

John Evelyn John Evelyn (31 October 162027 February 1706) was an English writer, landowner, gardener, courtier and minor government official, who is now best known as a diarist. He was a founding Fellow of the Royal Society. John Evelyn's diary, or ...

in Rome in 1645, and Cassiano dal Pozzo had bought several Bellange prints there, and copies, by the 1650s. Bellange's subjects can be summarized as: * Five large prints of religious narrative subjects:''Adoration of the Magi'', ''Christ Carrying the Cross'', ''The Martyrdom of St Lucy'', ''Raising of Lazarus'', ''Three Women/Marys at the Tomb'' * Smaller religious prints, with several Madonnas and Child * An incomplete set of figures of Christ, St Paul and the

Twelve Apostles In Christian theology and ecclesiology, the apostles, particularly the Twelve Apostles (also known as the Twelve Disciples or simply the Twelve), were the primary disciples of Jesus according to the New Testament. During the life and minist ...

, several in two versions, sixteen in total * A set of three figures of the

Three Magi The biblical Magi from Middle Persian ''moɣ''(''mard'') from Old Persian ''magu-'' 'Zoroastrian clergyman' ( or ; singular: ), also referred to as the (Three) Wise Men or (Three) Kings, also the Three Magi were distinguished foreigners in the G ...

* Four figures of female "gardeners" or ''Hortulanae'' * Two subjects with a

man * Two scenes from classical mythology, ''The Death of Portia'' and ''Diana and the Hunter'' (or Orion), and ''Military figures outside a city'', which is either a capriccio, or depicts a classical subject that is now unclear. File:Plate from Funeral of Charles III of Lorraine MET DP820783 (cropped).jpg, Probable self-portrait at centre of ''Funeral of Charles III of Lorraine'' File:The Annunciation MET DP820780.jpg, ''Annunciation'' File:Military Figures outside a City MET DP815630.jpg, ''Military figures outside a city'' File:The Martyrdom of Saint Lucy MET DP820784.jpg, ''The Martyrdom of St Lucy'' File:Gardener with a Basket on her Arm, from Hortulanae series MET MM10514.jpg, ''Gardener with basket'', one of four "Hortulanae" File:Bellange Magi.jpg, ''Balthazar'', one of the Three Magi File:Bellange Walch 26.JPG, ''Melchior'', another, seen from behind File:St_John_the_Apostle_by_Jacques_Bellange.jpg , ''Saint John the Apostle'' File:Bellange, The Virgin and Child with the Magdalen and Saint Anne.jpg, ''The Virgin and Child with the Magdalen and Saint Anne'' File:Bellange Virgin.jpg, ''The Virgin with a Spindle''

Paintings

Jacques Bellange - Beggar Looking through His Hat - Walters 372647 (cropped)

No firmly attributed painting by Bellange survives; all the palace decorations that were his major commissions have been destroyed. A number of easel paintings have been attributed to him, but there is little consensus among art historians on the correctness of these attributions, and the works have varying degrees of relation to the idiosyncratic style of Bellange's etchings. A ''Lamentation of Christ'' in the

Hermitage Museum The State Hermitage Museum ( rus, Государственный Эрмитаж, r=Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaž, p=ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ, links=no) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is the largest ...

has been attributed to Bellange since the 1970s, and a related drawing is probably by Bellange, but the Hermitage canvas itself is described by Griffiths and Hartley as "a rather nasty object, with lurid flesh tones, and many have refused to believe that it could be from Bellange's hand". Other leading candidates are ''Saint Francis in Ecstasy Supported by Two Angels'' in Nancy, and a pair of panels of the Virgin and Angel of the Annunciation in

Karlsruhe Karlsruhe ( , , ; South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the third-largest city of the German state (''Land'') of Baden-Württemberg after its capital of Stuttgart and Mannheim, and the 22nd-largest city in the nation, with 308,436 inhabitants. ...

. To his Nancy contemporaries, Bellange must have been known mainly as a painter, but no very useful descriptions of his work survive. He is recorded as painting a number of portraits, but none are known to have survived. A ''Beggar Looking Through His Hat'' in the

Walters Art Museum The Walters Art Museum, located in Mount Vernon-Belvedere, Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is a public art museum founded and opened in 1934. It holds collections established during the mid-19th century. The museum's collection was amassed ...

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

, which they attribute to Bellange, was donated by the former Soviet spy

Michael Straight Michael Whitney Straight (September 1, 1916 – January 4, 2004) was an American magazine publisher, novelist, patron of the arts, a member of the prominent Whitney family, and a confessed spy for the KGB. Early life Straight was born in New Yo ...

(1931–2004): "Given the secretive character of the man depicted, peering at us through a hole in his hat, the painting may have had a particular appeal for its previous owner", the museum suggests. It has been speculated that some of his prints are versions of his paintings, but there is no evidence for this, and the evidence of compositional changes made during the etching process in some prints goes against the theory.

Drawings

About 80 to 100 drawings attributed to Bellange survive, though many of these would not be accepted by all authorities; there is no

catalogue raisonné A ''catalogue raisonné'' (or critical catalogue) is a comprehensive, annotated listing of all the known artworks by an artist either in a particular medium or all media. The works are described in such a way that they may be reliably identified ...

as yet. The concentration on religious subjects in the prints is less marked in the drawings. Only one drawing that is clearly the preparatory working drawing for an etching survives, ''The Virgin and Child with the Magdalen and Saint Anne'' at Yale, which has been intensively worked on and was apparently gone over with a blind (inkless) stylus to transfer the main outlines onto the plate at the start of etching. A drawing in the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...

is of a group of background figures for another print, and many drawings are similar to the etchings but with different compositions, perhaps preliminary sketches; "they are nearly always spontaneous, swift and tense", and often mainly in wash. Other drawings unrelated to his etchings survive, and in 1600–1602, long before he is known to have etched himself, Bellange supplied the prolific Flemish printmaker Crispijn de Passe, best known in Britain for his print of the

Gunpowder Plot The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in earlier centuries often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason, was a failed assassination attempt against King James I by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby who sough ...

ters a few years later, who was then living in

, with drawings for eight prints that de Passe engraved, crediting Bellange with the design (''inv.'' or ''invenit'') on the plate. Five of these were a series called ''Mimicarum aliquot facetiarum icones ad habitum italicum expressi'' or "Depictions of some droll witticisms, rendered in the Italian manner". A drawing of a single figure then described as of ''Hercules'' sold for the remarkable price of £542,500 at

Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...

in 2001, and is now in the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, New York, which has decided it represents ''Samson''. File:The Raising of Lazarus MET 1994.209 (cropped).jpg, ''The Raising of Lazarus'', Metropolitan Museum of Art File:Bellange figures.jpg, Study for background group in the ''Raising of Lazarus'', Louvre File:Bellange Eq statue.jpg, ''Equestrian statue'', Louvre File:Bellange MMA Samson.jpg, ''Samson'' or ''Hercules'', see text. Metropolitan Museum of Art File:Bellange gardener.jpg, Figure of a young woman, British Museum

Reputation

Bellange's reputation was fairly widespread by soon after his death, presumably very largely through his prints. The imitations by Merian and others, the reprints by Le Blond in Paris, and the large numbers of prints that survive, many from plates worn by large numbers of impressions, all imply that his prints had a healthy market. Many drawings have early inscriptions attributing them to him, which are often not supported by modern scholars, suggesting that an attribution to Bellange was a desirable one to have. In 1620 Balthasar Gerbier, a leading Flemish agent for collectors like the

Duke of Buckingham Duke of Buckingham held with Duke of Chandos, referring to Buckingham, is a title that has been created several times in the peerages of England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom. There have also been earls and marquesses of Buckingham. ...

and

Charles I Charles I may refer to: Kings and emperors * Charlemagne (742–814), numbered Charles I in the lists of Holy Roman Emperors and French kings * Charles I of Anjou (1226–1285), also king of Albania, Jerusalem, Naples and Sicily * Charles I of ...

, and a friend of Rubens, wrote a memorial poem for Goltzius, part of which translates as: "Italy boasts of Raphael and Michelangelo, Germany of Albrecht Dürer, France of Bellange". In another poem of 1652, from Paris, Bellange is included in a similar list of great names from art. By this time, however, the taste in French art for a cool and classical form of Baroque that had set in from the 1620s was already reducing the appreciation of Bellange, whose reputation continued to fall, along with that of Mannerism in general. For the same reason, there are no artists who can be seen to have been directly influenced by Bellange's style. Unlike the Dutch and Italians, French artists had no large collection of biographies until the latter part of the century, but the great print collector Michel de Marolles was aware of 47 or 48 prints by Bellange, most of which were in his collections; these would not be exactly the same as the 47 or 48 in modern works, but very largely so. By the mid-18th century, the great French authority

Pierre-Jean Mariette Pierre-Jean Mariette (7 May 1694 – 10 September 1774) was a collector of and dealer in old master prints, a renowned connoisseur, especially of prints and drawings, and a chronicler of the careers of French Italian and Flemish artists. He wa ...

was scornful and dismissive: "Bellange is one of those painters whose licentious manner, completely removed from a proper style, deserves great distrust. It nevertheless had its admirers, and Bellange had a great vogue. ... Several pieces by him are known, which one cannot bear to look at, so bad is their taste". Many biographical compendiums simply omitted him, even as late as the 1920s. Another judgment of 1767 was quoted with approval by A. P. F. Robert-Dumesnil in his biographical dictionary ''Le Peintre-Graveur Français'' (1841), complaining that Bellange's etchings had "much more bizarreness than judgment, and very little correctness". However, Robert-Dumesnil did recognise that his style had something in common with the Romantics.Griffiths and Hartley, 42 Bellange's critical rehabilitation came with a general revival of interest in Mannerism. Ludwig Burchard wrote an article about him in 1911, with somewhat cautious praise. An important lecture by the Viennese art historian

Max Dvořák Max Dvořák (4 June 1874 – 8 February 1921) was a Czech-born Austrian art historian. He was a professor of art history at the University of Vienna and a famous member of the Vienna School of Art History, employing a ''Geistesgeschichte'' met ...

, ''Über Greco und den Manierismus'' ("On Greco and Mannerism", published 1921) focused on four artists: Michelangelo,

Tintoretto Tintoretto ( , , ; born Jacopo Robusti; late September or early October 1518Bernari and de Vecchi 1970, p. 83.31 May 1594) was an Italian painter identified with the Venetian school. His contemporaries both admired and criticized the speed wit ...

, Bellange, and the almost-as-reviled El Greco. Bellange became an intellectual fashion and his work was interpreted in various ways. The German art historian

Erica Tietze-Conrat Erica Tietze-Conrat (née Erika Conrat, also known as Erica Tietze; born June 20, 1883 – died December 12, 1958) was an Austrian-born American art historian, one of the first women to study art history, a strong supporter of contemporary art in ...

pursued a Freudian interpretation: "The way in which the artist sees forms is strongly sexual, perversely sexual; and entirely genuine, since it mirrors the artist's sub-conscious. Otherwise he would never have drawn Saint John in a series of Apostles in so female a fashion...The angel of the Annunciation is a hermaphrodite, but not with mixed but with marked characteristics of either sex...". Another tradition, reflected in the quotation from Anthony Blunt above, followed

Otto Benesch Otto Benesch (29 June 1896 in Ebenfurth – 16 November 1964 in Vienna) was an Austrian art historian. He was taught by Max Dvořák and is considered a member of the Vienna School of Art History. He is well known for his catalogue of Rembran ...

in placing Bellange in the context of a strain of Gothic mysticism that penetrated French Renaissance art. The first exhibition devoted to Bellange took place in 1931/32 at the

Albertina The Albertina is a museum in the Innere Stadt (First District) of Vienna, Austria. It houses one of the largest and most important print rooms in the world with approximately 65,000 drawings and approximately 1 million old master prints, as well ...

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, followed by an American one in 1975 ( Des Moines,

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, and New York), based around the excellent collection that the

Boston Museum of Fine Arts The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

had built up over the preceding decades. In 1997 a European exhibition based on an American private collection went to the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam The Rijksmuseum () is the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to Dutch arts and history and is located in Amsterdam. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough of Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the Ste ...

and Statens Museum, Copenhagen, as well as the

Carnegie Museum of Art The Carnegie Museum of Art, is an art museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was at what is now the Main Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsbur ...

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...

. An exhibition was held in Rennes in 2001. Bellange has also featured prominently in exhibitions with a broader scope in the period, and there is now a catalogue raisonné of the prints by Nicole Walch, ''Die Radierungen des Jacques Bellange'', Munich 1971.Griffiths and Hartley, 7, 44

Notes

References

* Blunt, Anthony, ''Art and Architecture in France, 1500-1700'', 2nd edn 1957, Penguin * Griffiths, Antony & Hartley, Craig, ''Jacques Bellange, c. 1575-1616, Printmaker of Lorraine'', British Museum Press, 1997, * Jacobson, Karen, ed. (often wrongly cat. as George Baselitz), entries by Sue Welsh Reed, ''The French Renaissance in Prints'', 1994, Grunwald Center, UCLA, * * Sylvestre, Michel. "Bellange, Jacques." In

Grove Art ''Grove Art Online'' is the online edition of ''The Dictionary of Art'', often referred to as the ''Grove Dictionary of Art'', and part of Oxford Art Online, an internet gateway to online art reference publications of Oxford University Press, ...

Online. Oxford Art Online
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(accessed November 8, 2010). * Rosenberg, Pierre. ''Did Jacques de Bellange Go to Italy? Notes on the Exhibition in Rennes'', October 2001,

The Burlington Magazine ''The Burlington Magazine'' is a monthly publication that covers the fine and decorative arts of all periods. Established in 1903, it is the longest running art journal in the English language. It has been published by a charitable organisation s ...

, Vol. 143, No. 1183, pp. 631–634
JSTOR
* "Yale": Boorsch, Suzanne and Marciari, John (eds), ''Master drawings from the Yale University Art Gallery'', 2006, Yale University Press, ,
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External links

Images of most of Bellange's etchings from MFA Boston, plus a drawing. Note St Peter (40.132) is not unique as they claim

Prints & People: A Social History of Printed Pictures
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on and by Jacques Bellange (see index) {{DEFAULTSORT:Bellange, Jacques French etchers 1570s births 1616 deaths Mannerist artists Court painters Artists from Nancy, France People from Lorraine (duchy)