The Watertown weekly leader. [volume] (Watertown, Jefferson County, Wis.) 1912-1917, 1912-05-10

hiCteu dS q desperate act of
seHdefense on the part Of the hard-pushed quarry
When the antlered monster charged down upon
MN, crushing him to death before he had time
TO withdraw his invaluable flint? That bit of
oohe-encased rock-what tragedies of the Stone
age does it not suggest?
But we have strayed far afed from the real
purpose or these lines, which is none else than
TO make the reader acquainted with the Innings
Oh 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 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 peculiarites and mannerisms, as
glance at Stradanus' prancing, heavily
steeds and giant-limbed discloses. Strada-
nus was born at most opportune moment, for
the craving for pictorial matter making itself
felt In the second half of his century was Great
ing demand which far exceeded the supply and
though your Bodies and Tschudis and even
Her art critics, insist that this craving helped
more than any other circumstance to prostitute
art, debasing the divine inspiration of the painter
TO a common craft, 1t must not be forgotten that
but for men like Stradanus, Theodore de Bry,
Hans Boil, the multitudinous Gale family at Ant
awerp, Collaera, Wierx Mallory, Sadeler and Colt
Zfus 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
fury would be nothing like as correct and init
mate it 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, glance
at "Theuerdank," Emperor Maximilian's famous
book CT adventures, and at the prints appertain-
ing to the frst-named series, will show Both the
designer of the pictures and the welder of the
graver had made giant strides in the interval and
from reproductions of original
drawings by Stradanus' hand, many master Of
the eighteenth century would have done we'll to
study the Italianised Flemings 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 one 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 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 would have done the busy Antwerp en-
gravers an injustice, disclosed when the
original came into ones possession, for there,
immortalized by master hand, prance about not
one but several channels 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 Angelolike limbs
strapping steigeisen, crampons to his naked
feet, which, of course, never done To turn
to another form of sport-elephant and ostrich
.huntng-Stradanus in the former picture drew
his quarry of very understood dimensions mis-
take not usually made either by him OF by other
artists OF his age, who, as a rule magnified the
size of foreign animals. Take as an instance
our reproduction of engraving after another
drawing by the same Forentine artist. Here we
have elephants which If accept the ordinary
human form 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 trogo-
dyte or cavedweller, race who were believed
TO be of dwarf stature the disproportion Is in
feHded to be as great as 1t is. AS early pic