The citizen., 1912-05-10

seItdefense 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
bone-encased rock-what tragedies of the Stone
Age does it not suggest?
But we have strayed far aield 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.
Florentine of the Florentines, though Flemish
by birth, for he was born in Bruges in the year
1928, Giovanni della Strada, 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 peculiarites and mannerisms as
a glance at Stradanus' prancing, heavily-maned
steeds and giant-limbed men 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
leT art critics, insist that this craving helped
than any other circumstance to prostitute
art, debasng the divine inspiration of the painter
to a common craft, it must not be forgotten that
but for men like Stradanus Theodore de Bry
Hans BOl, the multtudinous Gale family at Ant
werp. Collaera Wierx, Mallery, Sadeler and Colt
zius 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
tury 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 hundred
and four Venationes sporting pictures. a glance
at "Theuerdank' Emperor Maxman's famous
book Of adventures and at the prints appertain
ing TO the irst-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 see from reproductions Of original
drawings by Stradanus hand, many a master Of
the eighteenth century would have done well to
study the Italiansed 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-vz., the chase Of the
! chamois When one first saw the print of this
picture and ones astonshed 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 engrayer and not
by 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 was disclosed when the
original came into ones possession, for there,
mmortalized by master hand, prance about not
one but several chamois with this curious mall
/ formation.
In other respects, too, Stradanus drew upon his
imagination in concocting this drawing for he
| represents the man Of Michael Angelolke limbs
strapping stegeisen, crampons to his naked
( feet which, Of course, was never done To turn
to another form Of sport-elephant and ostrich
NOTWITHSTANDING in the former picture drew
his quarry of very understood dimensions, a mis-.
I take not usually made either by him or by other
artists of his age, who as a rule magnifed the
size Of foreign animals Take as 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 nigh, 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 were believed
to be of dwarf stature, the disproportion is in
tended to be as great as it is. AS an early pic