Lawrence democrat. (Lawrenceburg, Tenn.) 1884-1925, 1912-05-22


selfdefense on the part of the hard.pushed quarry
when the antlered monster charged down upon
MIN, 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 1t not suggest?
But we have strayed far afeld from the real
purpose Of thesA 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 Blorentnes, 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 pecularties and mannersms,
glance at Stradanus prancing heavilymaned
steeds and giantlimbed men dscloses. 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 Great
ing demand which far exceeded the supply and
though your Bodies and Tschuds, and even ear
lier 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
but for men like Stradanus, Theodore de Bry
Hans Bol the multitudlnous Gale family at Ant
werp Collaera, Wierx Mallery, Sadeler and Colt
Zius, as we'll 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 correct and inti-
mate 1t is What progress, for instance, art
made in the half-century between 1917 and the
year 1857, when StFadanus drew his one hundred
and four venationes sporting pictures, 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 from reproductions Of original
drawings by Stradanus' hand, many 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
the most characteristic in this respect is the pic
ture Of mountain sport-viz., the chase Of the
channels. 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 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 In other respects correct. But in
this one would have done the busy Antwerp en-
gTavers an injustice, disclosed when the
original came into ones possession, for there,
immortalized by master hand, prance about not
one but several chanois 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
} strapping steigeisen, or crampons, to his naked
feet which, of course, was never done. To turn
to another form of sport-elephant and ostrich
hunting-Stradanus in the former picture drew
his quarry of very understood dimensions mis-
I take not usually made either by him or by other
artists Of his age, who, a rule, magnifed the
size of foreign animals. Take as an instance
4 our reproduction of an engraving after another
D drawing by the same F1orentine 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 hamstrirging his quarry is a troglo
D dyte or cave-dweller a 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