Reverse Copy of La Mendiante Venant de Recevoir la Charité (The Female Beggar Receiving her Charity), from Les Gueux suite appelée aussi Les Mendiants, Les Baroni, ou Les Barons (The Beggars, also called the Barons)
17th century
Medium
Etching
Dimensions
Sheet: 5 1/2 x 3 1/2 in. (14 x 8.9 cm) trimmed and backed
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1947
Accession Number
47.100.759
Art Historical Context
This poignant etching, titled *Reverse Copy of La Mend Venant de Recevoir Charité* (The Female Beggar her Charity), belongs to Jacques Callot's renowned *Les Gueux* series also known as *Lesendiants*, *Les Baroni*, or *The Beggars*. Created in 17th century, captures a ragged woman humbly accepting alms, her tattered clothes and weary expression embodying the harsh realities of poverty in early modern Europe. Callot, a masterful French printmaker active in Lorraine and Florence, produced this series around the 1620s–1630s, drawing from the itinerant beggars he observed during his travels. As a...
About the Artist
Jacques Callot|Anonymous · 1592–1635
Jacques Callot (1592–1635) was a French printmaker and draftsman from the Duchy of Lorraine, widely regarded as one of the first great artists to practice the graphic arts exclusively. His more than 1,400 etchings chronicled the breadth of 17th-century life, from Medici court festivities to the brutal realities of warfare. Callot revolutionized etching through technical innovations including the é...