d swiftly. Passing over many plates,
important and unimportant, we come three years later to the _Great Fair
of Florence_, pronounced by M. Meaume, Callot's masterpiece. "It is
doubtful," says this excellent authority, "if in Callot's entire work a
single other plate can be found worthy to compete with the _Great Fair
of Florence_. He has done as well, perhaps, but never better."

At this time his production was, all of it, full of life and spirit,
vivacious and fluent, the very joy of workmanship. He frequently began
and finished a plate in a day, and his long apprenticeship to his tools
had made him completely their master. In many of the prints are found
traces of dry point, and those who looked on while he worked have
testified that when a blank space on his plate displeased him he was
wont to take up his instrument and engrave a figure, a bit of drapery,
or some trees in the empty spaces, directly upon the copper, improvising
from his ready fancy.

For recreation he commonly turned to some other form of his craft. He
tried painting, and some of his admirers would like to prove that he was
a genius in this sort, but it is fairly settled that when once he became
entangled in the medium of color he was lost, producing the heaviest and
most unpleasing effects, and that he produced no finished work in this
kind. He contributed to the technical outfit of the etcher a new
varnish, the hard varnish of the lute-makers which up to that time had
not been used in etching, and which, substituted for the soft ground,
enabled him to execute his marvelous little figures with great lightness
and delicacy, and also made it possible for him to keep several plates
going at once, as he delighted to do, turning from one to another as his
mood prompted him.

This Florentine period was one of countless satisfactions for him. More
fortunate than many artists, he won his fame in time to enjoy it. His
productions were so highly regarded during his lifetime that good proofs
were eagerly sought, and to use Baldinucci's expression, were
"_enfermees sous sept clefs_." He was known all over Europe, and about
his neck he wore a magnificent gold chain given him by the Grand Duke
Cosimo II, in token of esteem. In the town which he had entered so few
years before in the gipsy caravan, he was now the arbiter of taste in
all matters of art, highly honored, and friend of the great. When Cosimo
died and the pensions of the artists were discontinued, Ca