The Idaho Springs siftings-news., 1912-05-11

eeiiaeiense on the part of the hard-pushed quarry
"heh the antlered monster charged down upon
nun crushing him to death before he had time
10 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 adeld 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
vet rank among the oldest We have
Florentne of the Forentines. though Flemish
by birth for he was born in Bruges In the year
1hs3, Giovanni della Strada his Latin
1zed name with which he frequently signed his
work, Joannes Stradanus. had acquired by his
apprenticeship to Michael Angelo many of the
famous artists pecuarties and mannerisms,
glance at Stradanus prancing. heavily-maned
steeds and giantltmbed men discloses Strada-
mus born a most opportune moment for
the craving for pictorial matter making itse.
felt in the second half of his century was Great
ing a demand which far exceeded the supply. and
though your Rodes and Tschuds. and
lier critics Insist that this craving helped
more than any other circumstance prostitute
art dehasing the divine inspiration of the painter
TO common craft it must not be forgotten that
but for men like Stradanus, Theodore de Bry.
Hans Bol the multitudnous Gale family at Ant
werp Collaera, Wierx, Mallery, Sadeler and Colt
gius, well 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 correct and init
mate as 1t Is What progress. for instance, art
made in the halfcentury between 1917 and the
year 1867. when Stradanus drew his hundred
and four Venatoues sporting pictures, glance
at "Theuerdank.' Emperor Maximilians 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 wieder 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 Flernings 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
chamos. When first the print of this
picture and ones astonished gaze rested upon the
delineation of the agile mountain beast carrying
horns that crooked forward instead OF back
ward, one naturally assumed that this extraordi
nary mistake 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 injustice disclosed when the
original came into ones possession for there
immortalized 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 concoctinE this drawing. for he
represents the OF Michael Angelo-like limbs
strapping steigesen, or crampons. to his naked
feet. which Of course done. To turn
TO another form OF sport-ele phant and ostrich
hunting -Stradanus in the former picture drew
his quarry Of very understood dimensions a mis-
take not usually made either by him or by other
artists of his age who, a rule magnfed the
size of foreign animals, Take as an instance
our reproduction of engraving after another
drawing by the Florentine artist. Here we
have elephants which II we accept the ordinary
human form scale. must have stood some
thing like eighteen feet high. though probably,
the inscription below tells that the man In
the act of hamstrnging his quarry is troglo-
Sdyte cave-dweer a who were believed
to be of dwarf stature. the disproporton is in
tended to be as great as it is AS early pic