The commonwealth. (Greenwood, Miss.) 1896-1923, 1912-05-10

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self-defense on the part of the hard-pushed quarry
when the antlered monster charged down upon
him, crushing him to death before he had time
to withdraw his invaluable flint? That bit Of
boneencased rock-what tragedies of the Stone
Age does it not suggest?
But we have strayed far afeld from the real
purpose of these lines, which is none else than
10 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.
F~lorentine of the Florentines, though Flemish
by birth, for he was born in Bruges in the year
1923, Giovanni della Strada, or to use his Latin
lied name with which he frequently signed his
work, Joannes Stradanus, had acquired by his
apprenticeship to Michael Angelo many Of the
famous artists peculiaTities and mannerisms, as
q glance at Stradanus' prancing, heavily-maned
steeds and giantlimbed men d~iscloses. 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
Her art critics, insist that this craving helped
more than any other circumstance to prostitute
art, ~debasing the divine inspiration of the painter
to q common craft, 1t must not be forgotten that
but for men like Stradanus, Theodore de Bry,
Hans BOl, the multitudinous Gale family at Ant
werp, Collaera, Wierx, Mallery, Sadeler and Colt
Eius, as well as the De Passe family, who all
worked with extraordinary energy In turning out
pictures Of the day." our 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 StFadanus drew his one hundred
and four Venationes sporting pictures, a glance
at "Theuerdank," Emperor Maximilian's famous
book of adventures, and at the prints appertain-
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 a master Of
the eighteenth century would have done well to
study the Italianised Jennings method and
touches.
The drawings afford amusing evidence of the
widespread ignorance which then prevailed In
connection with certain forms of sport. Perhaps
Inc most characteristic in this respect is the pic
lure Of mountain s~port-viz., the chase of the
chamois. When one first saw the print Of this
picture and ones astonished gaze rested upon the
deIineation of the agile mountain beast carrying
norns that are crooked forward instead of back
ward, one naturally assumed that this extraordi.
nary mistake was made by the engraver and not
by the artist who drew the animal, whose body
and pose are in other respects correct But in
th's one would have done the busy Antwerp en-
graYers an Injustice. as was disclosed when the
original came into ones possession, for there,
lmmortalized by master hand, prance about not
one but several chasnois 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 Angelolike limbs
Swapping steigeisen, or crampons, to his naked
leet, which, Of course, was never done. To turn
70 another form Of sport-elephant and ostrich
nlntlng-Stradanus In the former picture drew
MS quarry of very understood dimensions, a mis-.
take not usually made either by him or by other
aIusts Of his age, who, as a 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
nave elephants which IL we accept the ordinary
human form as our scale, must have stood some
Jung like eighteen feet high, though probably,
u the inscription below tells us that the man in
.e act of hamstringing his quarry is a troglo-
uyte or c~ave-dweller. a race who were believed
10 De Of dwarf stature, the disproportion is In
TENDED to be as great as It is. AS an early pic