tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">10 and Wechtlin’s Alcon Freeing his Son from the Serpent (B. 9) are of this type.

The Italians, in turn, often used two blocks in the German fashion, reproducing a complete crosshatched pen drawing with one tint block. Even da Carpi used this procedure more than occasionally, as in St. John Preaching in the Desert

after Raphael (B. XII), and in The Harvest after Giulio Romano (B. XII). Most other Italian chiaroscurists made frequent use of this method which had the virtue of simplicity. Outstanding exponents included Niccolò Boldrini, who worked chiefly after drawings by Titian, and in the early 17th century the brothers Bartolomeo and G. B. Coriolano. Andreani’s prints were usually in a more independent style which employed a clear outline in gray or soft brown with three tints blocks. While technical procedures were identical in Italian and German chiaroscuros after pen drawings, the Italian work tended to be looser than the German, which was more careful and methodical.

The Italian style, then, strictly interpreted, was simply the da Carpi style. Less rigorously considered, it included the free Italian variants of the German process.

Hendrick Goltzius of Haarlem, whose first chiaroscuros date from 1588, combined both Italian and German influences with marvelously crisp drawing and cutting and sharper color combinations than were common. Paulus Moreelse, a Dutch artist in the first half of the 17th century, employed a dark block in clear outline but modeled his forms internally in the da Carpi manner. The technical procedure was therefore close to Andreani’s.

A number of other well-known artists including Simon Vouet and Christoffel Jegher, and quite a few anonymous ones, also turned out occasional pieces in the first half of the 17th century, generally in the manner of da Carpi or Goltzius. Perhaps the most prolific was Ludolph Businck, who created prints in France especially after drawings by George Lallemand.

After this period little was done in the medium until 1721, when Count Antonio Maria Zanetti in Venice made his first chiaroscuro woodcut. He worked consistently for almost thirty years and sent proofs to his friends in Europe, mostly important connoisseurs, through whom the prints became widely known. For the most part they were in the da Carpi style, to which he added a light charm. Between 1722 and 1724 Elisha Kirkall in London published twelve chiaroscuros after Italian masters. The prints were done in a combination of media—etching and mezzotint with relief blocks in either wood or metal—and were outside the woodcut tradition, but they attracted attention to the old process. In about 1726 Nicolas and Vincent Le Sueur in Paris produced some chiaroscuros, and a year later Jackson made his first example. The Le Sueurs followed da Carpi’s method while Jackson used a

loosely drawn outline and three tint blocks in a slight variation of the Andreani style.

One characteristic was shared in common by all early chiaroscurists; their work always reproduced drawings, usually in exact size. Jackson added a new dimension to the medium in 1735 by beginning to work after oil paintings.11 His attempt to convey their scale, solidity, and tonal range, while retaining the woodcut’s breadth of execution, was perhaps carrying the chiaroscuro into complexities for which it was not suited. The method called for extraordinary talents in planning, drawing, cutting, and printing, and it resulted in impressions that could not escape a certain heaviness of effect when compared with traditional work. Jackson’s prints in this style are both daring and original, but no later woodcutter had either the desire or the temerity to follow his example. The method remained a dead end in chiaroscuro.

Tailpiece in L’Histoire naturelle éclaircie dans une de ses parties principales, l’oryctologie, by D. d’Argenville, De Bure, Paris, 1755. This is one of the cuts Jackson made between 1725-1730. Actual size. Enlarged view.

Jackson and His Work

England: Obscure Beginnings

Little is known of Jackson’s early years. It is assumed that he was born in England about 1700, although many accounts, probably based upon Nagler, have him born in 1701. Papillon12 conjectures that he studied painting and engraving on wood with “an English painter” named “Ekwits,” but is not sure he remembers the name correctly. He believes this artist engraved most of the head pieces and ornaments in Mattaire’s Latin Classics, published by J. and R. Tonson and J. Watts in London, 1713, and remarks on similarities with Jackson’s style. Chatto13 believes these cuts were executed by Elisha Kirkall, interpreting the initials EK appearing on one of the prints to refer to this engraver rather than to “Ekwits.” He goes on to assume that Kirkall also engraved the blocks for Croxall’s edition of Aesop’s Fables, 1722, by the same publisher, and adds that Jackson was probably his apprentice and might have had some share in their execution. Most accounts of Jackson, taking Chatto’s word, note him as a pupil of Kirkall.

Linton14 believes that only Kirkall or Jackson could have made the cuts, “unless some Sculptor ignotus is to be credited with that most notable book of graver-work in relief preceding the work of Bewick.”

But it is doubtful that Jackson was a pupil of Kirkall. For this assumption we have the evidence of a curious and important little book, An Enquiry into the Origins of Printing in Europe,15 which because of a misleading title and an anonymous author has been overlooked as a reference source. It is a transcription of Jackson’s manuscript journal and was prepared for publication to coincide with

the launching of the wallpaper venture, Kirkall is mentioned as follows (pp. 25-26):

... I shall give a brief account of the State of Cutting on Wood in England for the type Press before he [Jackson] went to France in 1725. In the beginning of this Century a remarkable Blow was given to all Cutters on Wood, by an invention of engraving on the same sort of Metal which types are cast with. The celebrated Mr. Kirkhal, an able Engraver on Copper, is said to be the first who performed a Relievo Work to answer the use of Cutting on Wood.