Ludwig von Siegen
Ludwig von Siegen (c. March 1609
Early life
Siegen came from an aristocratic family, and may have been born in the family castle of Von Sechten near
Sechten was in
Little is known about Siegen's life between 1629 and 1639, when he asked William V's widow, now Regent for her son William VI, for a position. He may have seen active military service in these missing years in the middle of the Thirty Years War. He was appointed kammerjunker, which as the Landgrave was a minor, may have been effectively a tutorial position, as well as head of the personal guard of the ruler.
By 1641 he had decided to convert to
Invention of mezzotint
In Amsterdam Siegen must have been aware of Rembrandt's increasingly tonal etchings, achieved by conventional methods, filling in the dark areas by repeated lines. In Italy at the same time Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione was also exploring the possibilities of tonality in printmaking, leading him to invent monotyping at almost the same moment as Siegen invented mezzotint. Mezzotint achieves tonality by roughening the plate with thousands of little dots made by a metal tool with small teeth.
In a letter of 6 March 1641 to the Landgravine, Siegen announced that he had begun a portrait of her, and hinted that he would appreciate some money. News of his conversion had just reached the court, and the response seems to have been restrained. In August 1642, he finally finished the first known mezzotint engraving, a portrait of the
".... I could not pass up dedicating such a rare and previously unseen work of art in humble honour before anyone else to your highness who is an extraordinary connoisseur of art. The way this work is made, no engraver or artist could explain or guess.".[1]
The portrait is rather stiff, but the full range of tones from the very light ones on the layered lace collars to the solid black of the left background make it a very effective showpiece for the potential of mezzotint.
He worked from "light to dark", only roughening the plate where he wanted to produce tones, using "roulettes" or wheels with sharp teeth. This is unlike most later mezzotinters, who first roughened the whole plate, then scraped or burnished the roughness away where they wanted lighter tones, so working from "dark to light".
In 1643–44, he produced portraits of
In 1654 he did a large portrait of Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor from memory, having seen him at the Diet in Regensburg. He distributed copies to the various princes gathered there, without attracting further commissions.
Apart from portraits he did a St Bruno and in 1657 copied a Holy Family with St John the Baptist by Annibale Carracci.[3] His total mezzotint production was these seven plates, although he also produced paintings and medals.
Siegen's later career
After he left Amsterdam in 1644, Siegen first entered the armies of the Catholic
Prince Rupert of the Rhine
Rupert produced some stylish mezzotints himself, and through him, after his return to
" Of the new way of Engraving, or Mezzo Tinto, Invented, and communicated by his Highnesse Prince RUPERT, Count Palatine of Rhyne, &c."
However Rupert probably did invent the "rocker", a wide curved tool with teeth, used to roughen a whole plate, which was an essential tool in the developed technique. Rupert's artistic assistant or tutor Wallerant Vaillant (1623–77) was the first to adopt the process commercially, in Amsterdam in the 1660s.[3]
References
- ^ ISBN 0-931537-15-0
- ^ The Mezzotint, History and Technique by Carol Wax
- ^ ISBN 0-7141-2606-3
Sources
- Carol Wax, The Mezzotint: History and Technique (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1990)
External links
- account of the early history of mezzotint, National Portrait Gallery, London
- . New International Encyclopedia. 1905.
- Portret of Ludwig von Siegen, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
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