Mother and Three Children
1622 or later
Medium
etching on laid paper
Dimensions
sheet (trimmed to plate mark): 14.1 × 9.2 cm (5 9/16 × 3 5/8 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-E
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Rosenwald Collection
Accession Number
1949.5.323
Art Historical Context
This poignant etching, *Mother and Three Children*, after the renowned Baroque artist Jacques Callot around 1622 or later, captures a tender yet somber family scene on a modest scale—measuring just 14. × 9.2 cm. Callot, a masterful French printmaker who worked extensively in Italy and Lorraine, was celebrated for his intricate depictions of everyday life,, and human suffering. Works like this likely draw from his famous *Beggar's Suite* (Les Gueux), a series portraying the marginalized "bohemians" and vagrants of 17th-century Europe, reflecting the social upheavals of the Thirty Years' War era...
About the Artist
after Jacques Callot
**Jacques Callot (c. 1592–1635)**, the master whose designs inspired the works attributed "after Jacques Callot," was a pioneering French Baroque printmaker and draftsman born in Nancy, capital of the independent Duchy of Lorraine (now northeastern France). From a noble family—his father served as master of ceremonies and herald-at-arms to the Duke of Lorraine—young Callot was apprenticed to a gol...