arly work is buried in the mass of Thomassin's
production, and such of it as can be identified is poor and trivial. His
precocity was not the indication of rapid progress. His drawing was
feeble and was almost entirely confined to copying until 1616, when, at
the age of twenty-four, he began regularly to engrave his own designs,
and to show the individuality of treatment and the abundant fancy that
promptly won for him the respect of his contemporaries.

While he was in Thomassin's studio, it is reported that his bright charm
of face and manner gained him the liking of Thomassin's young wife--much
nearer in age to Callot than to her husband--and the jealousy of his
master. He presently left the studio and Rome as well, never to return
to either. It is the one misadventure suggestive of erratic tendencies
admitted to Callot's story by M. Meaume, although other biographers have
thrown over his life in Italy a sufficiently lurid light, hinting at
revelries and vagaries and lawless impulses unrestrained. If, indeed,
the brilliant frivolity of Italian society at that time tempted him
during his early manhood, it could only have been for a brief space of
years. After he was thirty all unquestionably was labor and quietness.

From Rome he went to Florence, taking with him some of the plates he
recently had engraved. These at once found favor in the eyes of Cosimo
II, of the Medici then ruling over Tuscany, and Callot was attached to
his person and given a pension and quarters in what was called, "the
artist's gallery." At the same time he began to study under the then
famous Jules Parigi, and renewed his acquaintance with his old friend
Canta Gallina, meeting in their studios the most eminent artists of the
day--the bright day not yet entirely faded of the later Renaissance.

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF JACQUES CALLOT

_Engraved by Vosterman after the painting of Van Dyck_]

Still his work was copying and engraving from the drawings of others.
Had he been under a master less interested and sympathetic than the good
Parigi, it is possible that his peculiar talent would never have
declared itself. At all events, Parigi urged him, and the urging
seems to have been necessary, to improve his drawing, to drop the burin
and study the great masters. Especially Parigi prayed him to cultivate
his precious talent for designing on a very small scale the varied and
complicated compositions with which his imagination teemed. His taste
fo