L'Enrolement des Troupes (The Enlistment of Troops), from Les Misères et les Mal-Heures de la Guerre (The Miseries and Misfortunes of War), plate 2

Art Historical Context

Jacques Callot's etching *L'Enrolement des Troupes* (The Enlistment of Troops), plate 2 from renowned series *Les Misères les Mal-Heures de Guerre* (The Mis and Misfortunes of), dates to 1633 and was published in collaboration with Israël Henriet This second state of three (per Lieure's catalog) measures a compact 3¼ x 7⅜ inches on the plate yet brims with chaotic energy. It depicts recruiters herding reluctant civilians—farmers, artisans, and vagrants—into military service, their faces etched with dread and resignation. Created amid the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), a cataclysmic conflict that ravaged Europe, Callot's series draws from the French invasion of his native Lorraine that same year. As one of the earliest works to portray war's unglamorous horrors with unflinching realism, it humanizes the era's atrocities, influencing later anti-war art like Goya's *Disasters of War*. Callot, a Baroque master printmaker, pioneered intricate etching techniques to pack dozens of expressive figures into tiny sheets, blending documentary precision with dramatic composition. Today, this Rogers Fund acquisition of 1922 graces the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Drawings and Prints department, inviting visitors to reflect on recruitment's timeless toll—the desperate promises, the shadowed violence, and the foreshadowed miseries ahead.

About the Artist

Jacques Callot|Israël Henriet · 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...