Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1912-05-10

hlcted as desperate act of
sen-oeIense 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
oone-encased rock-what tragedies of the Stone
Age does 1t 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 have.
Florentine of the Florentines, though Flemish
by birth, for he was born in Bruges in the year
1928, 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 peculiarities and mannerisms, as
a glance at Stradanus' prancng. heavily-maned
steeds and gant-limbed men discloses. Strada-
born at a most opportune moment, for
the craving for pictorial matter making itself
felt in the second half of his century Great
ing demand which far exceeded the supply, and
though your Bodies and Tschudis, and even ear
lier art critics, insist that this craving helped
more than any other circumstance to prostitute
art, debaslng the divine inspiration of the painter
to common craft, 1t must not be forgotten that
but for like Stradanus, Theodore de Bry,
Hans Boil, the multitudinous Gale family at Ant
werp, Coaera Wierx Maery Sadeler and Colt
zus, well the De Passe family, who all
worked with extraordinary energy in turning out
pictures of the day." knowledge of the daily
life and of occurrences In that tempestuous CEN
tury would be nothing like correct and inti-
mate 1t is What progress for instance, art
made in the halfcentury between 1917 and the
year 1867 when Stradanus drew his one hundred
and four Venationes sporting pictures, a glance
at "Theuerdank," Emperor Maxmilian's famous
book O. adventures, and at the prints appertan-
ing to the frstnamed SERIES will show. Both the
designer of the pictures and the wielder of the
graver had made giant strides in the interval, and
from reproductions of original
drawings by Stradanus' hand many a master of
the eighteenth century would have done well to
: study the Ialianised Feming'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
chamois. When first the print of this
picture and ones astonished gaze rested upon the
delineaton of the agile mountain beast carrying
horns that are crooked forward instead Of back
ward, 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
this one would have done the busy Antwerp en-
gravers an injustice. as was disclosed when the
original came into ones possession, for there,
immertalized by master hand, prance about not
one but several chamois 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 Angelolke limbs
strappng steigeisen, or crampons to his naked
feet which, Of course, was done To turn
to another form of sport-elephant and ostrich
MISUNDERSTANDING in the former picture drew
his quarry of very understood dimensions a mis-.
take not usually made either by him by other
artists Of his age. who rule, magnifed the
size of foreign animals. Take as an instance
our reproduction of engraving after another
drawing by the same F1orentine artist. Here we
have elephants which II accept the ordinary
human form as our scale must have stood some
thing like eighteen feet high. though probably
as the inscription below tells that the man In
the act Of hamstringing his quarry is troglo
dyte or cave-dweller, a race who were believed
TO be OF dwarf stature the disproportion s in
tended to be as great as 1t is. AS early pic