La Roue (The Wheel), Plate 14 from the series Les Grandes Misères et malheurs de la guerre (The Great Miseries and Misfortunes of War)

Inscriptions

Inscribed, in plate, within image, lower left: Israel ex. Cum. Priuil. Reg.; inscribed, in graphite, lower right margin: 14.; inscribed, in graphite, on support, lower right: 1352 I/III; Watermark, center; [under image] [indistinct]

Label

These two plates from the Great Miseries series graphically represent the torture enacted on captured soldiers. Later editions of Callot’s prints contained lines in verse below, which describe these images as the torture of dishonorable soldiers. Before assembled masses, the captives are strung from scaffolding or beaten on a wheel, their brutalized bodies put on display. Highlighted against the blank sky, the tormented men stand out to the viewer. In scrutinizing the little print, the viewer joins the gathered crowd of onlookers who are witness to the inhumanity on display. Despite the small scale of the works, Callot’s long lines create a visceral response to the horror captured in ink.

From the 2023 exhibition Recording War: Images of Violence 1500 – 1900, curated by Elizabeth Rice Mattison, Andrew W. Mellon Associate Curator of Academic Programming

Exhibition History

A Gift to the College: The Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Weil Jr. Collection of Master Prints, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 17-December 20, 1998.

Fatal Consequences: Callot, Goya, and the Horrors of War, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 9-December 12, 1990.

Piranesi-Goya; Roma fantastica and the Sleep of Reason and Francisco Goya and Jake & Dinos Chapman: Disasters of War, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, September 27, 2001-March 17, 2002.

Recording War: Images of Violence, 1500-1900, Ivan Albright Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, May 20-August 20, 2023.

The Four Faces of War: Callot, Goya, Kollwitz and Bellows, The William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, October 23-December 22, 2004.

Publication History

Timothy Rub, Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, Kelly Pask, "A Gift to the College: The Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Weil Jr. Collection of Master Prints", Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1998, listed, p.84, no. 48.

Goldfarb, Hilliard T., Wolf, Reva. "Fatal Consequences: Callot, Goya, and the Horrors of War." Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, page 84.

Provenance

Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York, 1975; Christie's, New York, November 2, 1983, lot 18 (bought in); sold to Adolph Weil, Jr., Montgomery, Alabama, privately after the sale; given to present collection, 1991.

Catalogue Raisonne

Lieure 1352

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Subjects