The enterprise. [volume] (Harlem, Mont.) 1899-1926, 1912-05-09


self-defense on the part of the hardpushed quarry
when the antered monster charged down upon
him. crushing him to death before he had time
to Withdraw his invaluable flint? That bit of
bone-encased rock-What TRAGEDIES of the Stone
Age does it not suggest?
But we have strayed far afield from the real
purpose OF these lines, which is none else than
to make the reader acquainted with the Innings
OF an Infinitely less remote age but which, as
samples OF finished drawings Of sporting scenes
yet rank among the oldest we have.
Forentine of the Forentines, though Flemish
by BIRTH for he was born in Bruges in the year
1928, Giovanni della Strada or to use his Latin
lied with which he frequently signed his
work, Joannes Stradanus had acquired by his
apprenticeship to Michael Angelo many of the
famous artists peculiarites and mannerisms, as
a glance at Stradanus prancing heaviy-maned
steeds and giant-limbed discloses. Strada-
nus was born at a most opportune moment, for
the craving for pictorial matter making itself
felt in the second half of his century was Great
ing a demand which far exceeded the supply and
though your Bodies and Tschudis and even ear
]ier art critics, insist that this craving helped
more than any other circumstance to prostitute
art debasing the divine inspiration of the painter
to common craft it must not be forgotten that
put for men like Stradanus, Theodore de Bry,
Hans Boil. the mutitudinous Gale family at Ant
Werp, Colaera, WierX, Mallory, Sadeler and Colt
zius, as we'll as the De Passe family, who all
pictures of the day. knowledge of the daily
life and of occurrences in that tempestuous CEN
fury would be nothing like as correct and init
mate as it is. What progress, for instance, art
made in the half-century. between 1917 and the
year 1867, when Stradanus drew his one hundred
and four Venatones sporting pictures, a glance
at Theuerdank," Emperor Maximilian's famous
book OF adventures, and at the prints appertan-
ing to the frst-named SERIES will show. Both the
designer of the pictures and the wielder of the
graver had made giant strides in the interval, and
as we can see from reproductions of original
drawings by Stradanus hand, many master of
the eighteenth century would have done we'll to
study the Itaanised Fleming's method and
touches.
The drawings afford amusing evidence of the
widespread ignorance which then prevailed in
connection with certain forms of sport. Perhaps
the most characteristic in this respect is the pic
ture OF mountain sport-viz the chase of the
chamols. When one first saw the print of this
picture and ones astonished gaze rested upon the
delineation of the agile mountain beast carrying
horns that are crooked forward instead of back
ward, one naturally assumed that this extraordi
nary mistake was made by the engraver and not
ny the artist who drew the animal, whose body
and pose are in other respects correct. But in
this one would have done the busy Antwerp en-
gravers an injustice, as disclosed when the
original came into ones possession for there
immortalized by master hand prance about not
one but several channels with this curious NAL
formation.
In other respects, too, Stradanus drew upon his
imagination in concocting this drawing for he
represents the man of Michael Angelo-like limbs
Swapping steigeisen, crampons, to his naked
feet, which, of course, never done. To turn
to another form Of snort-e]ephant and ostrich
NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. in the former picture drew
his quarry of very understood dimensions, mis-
take not usually made either by him or by other
artists OF his age, who, rule, magnifed the
size of foreign animals. Take as an instance
our reproduction of an engraving after another
drawing by the same Florentine artist Here we
have elephants which if we accept the ordinary
human form as our scale, must have stood some
thing like eighteen feet high, though probably
as the inscription below tells us that the man in
the act of hamstringing his quarry is a troglo
dyte or cave-dweller, race who believed
to be of dwarf stature, the disproporton is in
tended to be as great it is As an early pic.