Silva Rerum | 01.09.2015 Charles de La Haye ranks among the best engravers of the second half of the seventeenth century in the Commonwealth. He entered the country as an experienced artist capable of deftly exploiting the virtues of his craft—mostly copperplates and etchings, but also the recently devised mezzotint. Born in 1641 in Fontainebleau, de La Haye probably received his early education in France, but perfected his style as an engraver in Rome, his workplace since the 1660s. The reasons behind his move away from France are unknown—we can only surmise that the young artist found proper employment hard to come by among the numerous local engravers of quality, or that he was tempted by the prospect of learning and working in one of the major artistic centres of Europe.
De La Haye spent roughly twenty years of his life in the Eternal City, working continuously until the mid-1680s and then from around 1701 until 1705. In Rome, de La Haye found employment in the graphic workshop of the family of Rossi (de Rubeis)—a thriving publishing venture specialising in leaflets and pictorial reproductions sold as single-copy prints and album editions. The firm employed numerous engravers, not only Italian, but also French, Flemish, and, to a lesser extent, Dutch. Based on the printed inventories published by the Rossis, de La Haye can be said to have supplied them with about fifty copperplate copies of other masters, most significantly Ciro Ferri (Mary with the Child and Saints Catherine, Agnes, and Dorothy, Mary with the Child Appearing Before Saint Philip Neri, Coriolanus), Pietro da Cortona (Perseus, frescoes from the Room of Venus at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence), and Giovanni Francesco Romanelli. During his Roman period, de La Haye also produced etched portraits, of which three remain, depicting Saint Vincent de Paul, Domenico Marchetti, and an unknown cardinal.
In the 1680s de La Haye produced etchings directly related to France—portraits of a favourite of Louis XIV, Marie-Angélique de Scorraille de Roussille, Duchess of Fontanges (a bust profile) and actor and playwright Jean Crosnier (half-length). The latter seems particularly exceptional in de La Haye’s oeuvre, as most of his works were based on concepts devised by other artists (usually painters). In this case, the drawing came from his own hand, ad vivum, as noted in the signature. De La Haye embellished Crosnier’s portrait with a caduceus and a lyre, attributes indicating the subject’s occupation, while the inscription points the viewer to Crosnier’s works.
It is hard to establish the point of origin—still Rome or already Paris—of seventeen high-quality etchings by Charles de La Haye based on drawings by Raymond Lafage. The works stand out strongly from the engraver’s other works, exemplifying his facility with this graphic technique. De La Haye’s etchings were included in an album devoted to Raymond Lafage, with other graphics supplied by François Ertinger, Charles Simonneau, Gérard Audran, and Cornelis Marinus Vermeulen. Though Jan Vander Bruggen was the keeper of the departed painter’s flame in this instance, the engravers involved were also likely friends of Lafage. The album was published by Gerard Valck in Amsterdam with an imprimatur of the Republic of Holland. Etchings by Charles de La Haye mostly reproduce Lafage’s religious compositions (Christ and the Samaritan, The Holy Family, Angel with Tobias, Stigmatisation of Saint Francis, Coronation of Mary, Repose During the Escape from Egypt, Holy Family with Saint John in two versions, The Salutation of the Shepherds, Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still, Joseph Telling his Dreams, Crucifixion, The Figure of Saint Bibiana from Bernini). Aside from these, de La Haye also produced the Allegorical Self-Portrait of Lafage, Cronus Carrying the Truth, Satyr and Nymph, and Salmacis and Hermaphrodyte.
Though de La Haye may have returned to France after working in Rome, this sojourn would not have lasted too long. His next place of employment was the Commonwealth. Nothing corroborates the supposition that his departure from France on that occasion was motivated by religious reasons; it is far more likely that he had received a lucrative employment offer. Charles de La Haye took up the work of preparing engravings for a work by Johannes Hevelius. Since the early 1680s the astronomer had been looking abroad for an engraver who would prepare etchings for his Uranography on the basis of drawings supplied by his cooperator, Gdańsk painter Andreas Stech. Endowed with artistic talent, Hevelius devoted much attention to the graphical setting of his works. The French engraver used drawings by Stech, the main inventor of the French engraver’s works during the Gdańsk sojourn, as basis for frontispieces for Hevelius’ monumental Prodromus astronomiae, published together with Catalogus fixarum and Firmamentum Sobiescianum in 1687–90. These extensive, allegorical compositions describe the role and significance of astronomy and astronomers. The frontispiece for Prodromus astronomiae depicts Urania seated at a round table in a large hall with a star-sprinkled firmament for a ceiling. She is joined by a synodus astronomorum (thus named in an inscription on the cartouche attached to the entablature of the structure) made up of Ptolemy, Ulugh Beg, Tycho Brahe, Landgrave Wilhelm of Hessen, Hevelius, and Giovanni Battista Riccioli. Plaques on the walls over the astronomers’ heads proclaim their credos; at a terrace at the top of the building, others conduct observations of the sky. The frontispiece for Firmamentum Sobiescianum presents the enthroned Urania—accompanied by putti (representing planets) and major astronomers (with putti over their heads bearing cards and bands with inscriptions)—approached by Hevelius armed with a sextant and a shield symbolising the constellation he had discovered: Scutum Sobiescianum. In front of Hevelius, on top of a cloud, sits a volume entitled Catalogus fixarum and a long scroll presenting the work for the judgement of Urania and the collected astronomers. Hevelius is followed by animals whose names are attached to constellations, and in the lower right-hand corner, following a pattern established in numerous works produced in Gdańsk in the second half of the sixteenth and throughout seventeenth century, rests a panorama of the city referencing the historical moment of the allegorical depiction found on the sheet. A formidable album, Firmamentum Sobiescianum includes 54 maps of constellations and two maps of the northern and southern hemispheres of the sky, prepared by Charles de La Haye based on drawings by Hevelius and Stech. The Frenchman was among the last engravers employed by the astronomer before his death in 1687, a member of a group that in different periods included Jeremias Falck, Frans Allen, Lambert Visscher, Johann Benssheimer (Benßheimer), and Isaac Saal, summoned from Holland at Hevelius’ private expense.
Outside of etchings for Hevelius, de La Haye received several commissions in Gdańsk for etched portraits intended for published funeral speeches. Portrayals of the local patricians—Carl Ehler (d. 1686), Johann Gabriel Schmiedt (d. 1687), Pastor Friedrich Söhner of the church of Saint Barbara (d. 1687), and Friedrich Büthner (d. 1701)—were based on drawings by Andreas Stech, who applied the same mode of depiction in subsequent works of the same type, also those prepared for other engravers: with the bust portrait of the subject placed inside a stone-like frame shaped like an oval and seated on a pedestal. Thanks to his deft exploitation of the artistic potential of copperplates, the French engraver managed to capture the individual features of the portrayed persons perfectly. The characteristic of the models was completed with inscriptions placed on the frame, at the pedestal in the lower part of the etching, and on the rectangular backdrop which, thanks to the method of ‘cutting’ or hatching the letters, is also made to resemble stone. Inscriptions at the pedestals serve as epitaphs, turning the portraits into virtual paper monuments to the departed. The extensive inscription is absent only in the portrait of Doctor of Medicine Johann Gabriel Schmiedt. Aside from signatures of the painter and the engraver, his etched portrait includes only a modest note on the deceased, listing his given names, surname, and profession. A more extensive exposition is found in another etching from the same funeral leaflet—Programma in funere Johannis Gabrielis Schmiedii—published in 1687 in Gdańsk by David Friedrich Rhete. According to an inscription found in the lower part of the sheet, it depicts the ‘MONUMENTUM IN TEMPLO S. STEPHANO HELMSTADII DICATO ERECTUM’. The composition hinges on two elements—the oval tablet with the inscription and Schmiedt’s portrait, placed directly above in a frame of palm leaves, which recasts the setting of the standalone etched portrait in the same publication. Below the tablet with the inscription stands a vase with wilted tulips, seated between two open volumes. The one on the left bears the name ‘HIPPOCRATES’, the one to the right—‘EUCLIDES’; these inscriptions refer either to the authors or to the branches of knowledge they represent while also indicating the profession and interests of the departed. These are also hinted at in the professional and scientific instruments surrounding the tablet with the inscription. Above, to the sides of the portrait, a genius in a laurel wreath inscribed with ‘VIRTUTIS PRAEMIUM’ and a skeleton described as ‘VANITAS’ appear to struggle for the laurel wreath adorning the temples of the deceased. Higher still, two putti sear toward a crown held by a hand illuminated by light penetrating the clouds and marked with ‘AETERNITAS’. The one on the left blows a trumpet with a banner declaring ‘VIVAT’, while the other points to the crown seemingly stating the accompanying words ‘PLUS ULTRA’. The extensive allegorical composition of Schmiedt’s monument suited the tendencies of funerary art of the mid-seventeenth century, resembling certain epitaphs found in Gdańsk (to Konstantin Ferber, 1646; and the Guldenstern family, 1651; both found at the church of Saint Mary).
Two etchings by the Stech-de La Haye partnership—a portrait and a coat of arms—were included in Leich = Predigt bey der Leich = Begängnüss des Carol Ehlers, a sermon by Pastor Konstantin Schütz delivered at the memorial service for Carl Ehler, published in 1686 in Gdańsk. The portrait does not diverge from other works by the same artists. The other etching, depicting the Ehler coat of arms, represents a type of illustration often found in funeral leaflets from Gdańsk. The coat of arms is posted on a pedestal with labra and a jewel, enclosed between lush laurel branches and crowned with a laurel garland. Both the composition—a coat of arms on a pedestal—and the use of laurel for bordering are meant to glorify the deceased and his family.
According to the signature on the etching, de La Haye is also the author of a portrait of Michael Engel, Pastor of the church of the Holy Trinity in Gdańsk, who died in 1688. The portrait is a slight modification of the other depictions of Gdańsk notables: Michael Engel is depicted in half-form, with one hand resting on a volume and the other pressed against the chest. Though the etching does not include any mention of the author of the drawing on which the etching was based, who may have been Stech as well, given the clear allusions to the other works. Identical posing can be seen in portraits of Johann Naunachbar (etched by Jacob Sandrart) and Michael Falck (by Isaac Saal), based on Stech’s drawings. Notably, the portrait of Michael Engel does not exude the same power as the other Gdańsk portraits produced by Charles de La Haye, and the etching itself is more formulaic.
De La Haye remained in contact with Stech—and Gdańsk in general—after his move to Warsaw in late 1680s (probably in 1689). There, he produced the frontispiece for Beschreibung aller Kirchen-Gebäude in der Stadt Dantzig, a work on construction by historian of architecture Barthel Ranisch, published in 1695. This interesting composition—judging from the signature ‘Carol.’ de la Haye fecit.’, a wholly independent work—depicts an arcade through which the viewer sees the inside of a structure covered with a star-shaped rib-vault ceiling. Under the arcade sits an oval tablet decorated with leaves of acanthus, bearing the title of the publication. It is topped with a conch inscribed with a bust enclosed in laurel branches. Below the tablet, two lions tread on builder’s tools, holding the Gdańsk coat of arms. In the upper part of the etching, against the arch of the arcade, a crowned eagle holds a sceptre and a shield. This part of the composition indicates the place and time of the production of the work—the reign of Jan III Sobieski. The shield carried by the eagle alludes to Janina, the coat of arms of Sobieski, but the variation presented in the etching—enhanced with the sign of a cross interwoven with the letter S—indicates the constellation Scutum Sobiescianum discovered by Hevelius, with the S additionally pointing to the monarch. At the pillars of the arcade, putti bear cards and instruments of measurement. The one on the left holds a card with a plan for a triple-naved, six-spanned temple and a ruler, the one on the right—a projection of a span of a star-shaped rib-vault ceiling and a compass. The cards carried by the putti indicate the subject of the work, in which the builder from Gdańsk discusses the structure of Gothic buildings with a scientific interest uncommon to seventeenth-century publications. Copperplates included in this work about the churches of Gdańsk were the fruit of a cooperation between Ranisch and etchers working in the city. Some of the plates depicting plans and views of the temples were produced from Ranisch’s drawings by Johann Michael Gockheller and Johann Benssheimer. A few of the etchings which bear the signature ‘Ranisch Delin.’, indicating the use of the builder’s drawings as a basis, include no indication of the names of the etchers. In others (plans of the ceilings and diagrams of the ribs in all temples other than the Dominican church) one finds the signature ‘Ranisch fecit.’, suggesting a wholly independent work by the builder.
In Warsaw, de La Haye engaged in a cooperation with the royal painter Jerzy Eleuter Szymonowicz Siemiginowski, whom he had likely met in Rome while Siemiginowski attended the Accademia di San Luca at the behest of King Jan III. The ties binding the two artists were not solely professional. Siemiginowski’s wife, Karolina Guerquin, was the godmother of the etcher’s son, and the painter himself held the child for christening with Charles de La Haye’s wife. Both artists had stayed, worked, and perhaps even resided at the Casimir Palace in Warsaw, then the residence of Prince Jakub Sobieski. The Frenchman signed some of his works as having been completed in the palace. Based on certain publication details included in his etchings, one can surmise that he published and sold a proportion of his works himself.
Siemiginowski was the main inventor of the works Charles de La Haye completed in Warsaw; the Frenchman adapted both his drawings and his paintings. Both artists received their most significant commissions from King Jan III Sobieski. Charles de La Haye’s chisel marks three portrayals of the monarch—an equestrian portrait and two versions (called ‘large’ and ‘small’) of a bust portrait. Though both versions are similarly composed—featuring a bust in an oval frame seated on a pedestal—what sets them apart is the setting of particular elements, their dimensions, and the King’s antique attire. In the ‘large’ version the model’s pteryges is adorned with lion heads symbolising his might and physical strength, while in the ‘small’ version he bears a leopard skin on his shoulder, held together with a pin and adorned with an eagle carrying the Janina coat of arms, highlighting a heraldic theme carried into both editions by a crowned shield with five fields placed along the axis behind the pedestal. The ‘large’ version of the King’s portrait was produced around 1690 and dedicated to Queen Marie Casimire. The ‘small’ one, a later edition from 1692—not only etched, but also published by Charles de La Haye—was included in two publications: Andrzej Grzegorz Krupecki’s Quaestio juridica de immunitate ecclesiastica, published in Cracow in 1692, and Heinrich Anselm von Zieglera und Kliphausen’s Täglicher Schau-Platz der Zeit, published in Leipzig.
The portrayal of the King in the ‘smaller’ version resembles the depiction in the equestrian portrait against the backdrop of the battle of Vienna, painted around 1690 and known as the Apotheosis of Jan III. This equestrian portrait—signed ‘Humill. Subditus Georgius Eleuter Invenit et delineavit’ and ‘C. de la Haye Sculp. et excudit Varsaviae’—which played an important role in the monarch’s iconography by pioneering this type of depiction, was devised by Siemiginowski following examples from contemporary French and antique art familiar to both artists. Equestrian depictions of Louis XIV and Emperor Trajan (at the Arch of Constantine) were a direct inspiration. Like both versions of the bust, the etching enjoyed broad popularity and was replicated in numerous copies, not only graphical.
Other works by Charles de La Haye are also tied to the Sobieskis. The engraver authored the portrait of Queen Marie Casimire (originally for the Załuski collection and held by the National Library as late as 1933 but lost afterwards) and heraldic etchings—title pages of two prints dedicated to the King and the Queen, published in 1693 by Mikołaj Aleksander Schedl in Cracow. An eagle with the Janina coat of arms appeared in Skarbnica tajemnic Boskich, abo Rozmyślania Żywota y Męki Pana y Boga naszego Jezusa Chrystusa, Stanisław Józef Forzoni’s translation of a work by Jesuit Vincentius Bruno of Rimini, dedicated to Jan III. Another work by the same author—Delicye Nieba i Ziemie abo Rozmyślania obiasnione o Siedmi osobliwszych Uroczystościach—also a translation by Forzoni, this time dedicated to Marie Casimire, was adorned with an etching of an eagle bearing the d’Arquien coat of arms.
Two other copperplates executed in Warsaw by Charles de La Haye were also used as title pages. An etching depicting the interiors of the cathedral in Poznań during the session of a provincial synod served as a title print for Stanisław Jan Witwicki’s Synodus Posnaniensis Post gloriosam Alexandrii VIII Pontificis, published in Warsaw in 1689. A depiction of the session of the Sejm opens Mikołaj Chwałkowski’s Effata Regum Poloniae, also published in Warsaw, in 1694. This official etching concerned with the system of rule in the Commonwealth may have been inspired by earlier depictions of the sessions of the Sejm dating back to the first quarter of the seventeenth century.
The Frenchman’s final work related to the royal couple was an allegorical propaganda etching, based, as always, on Siemiginowski’s drawing, depicting Jakub Ludwik Sobieski as the personification of freedom. Commissioned by the Prince during the period of his struggle for the Polish throne, the etching was printed opposite the title page of Stanisław Orzechowski’s sixteenth-century political treatise Subditus fidelis, published in Warsaw in 1698. The etching depicts a crowned Jakub seated on a throne in front of a curtain and under a canopy bearing the word ‘LIBERTAS’. The Prince is dressed in an armour and holds a sword and a book. The allegorical significance of the work is completed with inscriptions placed in cartouches and on architectonic elements of the structure in the backdrop of the piece. The period of struggle for control over Poland after the death of Jan III also prompted another work by Charles de La Haye—a portrait of the French pretender to the throne, François Louis de Bourbon-Conti.
During his stay in Warsaw de La Haye completed orders for the King as well as others. As early as 1694, Siemiginowski prepared a design for the so-called Thesis with Święta Lipka for Primate Michał Radziejowski, which the Frenchman transformed into a graphic. The etching focuses on monumental architecture reminiscent of a temple, with vaulted ceilings on beams supported by columns. Each of the latter carries a medallion with a portrait of a Bishop of Warmia. The two latest ones, Jan Stanisław Zbąski and his predecessor, Primate Michał Radziejowski, stand inside the structure, conversing. Before them, at a distance, but in the foreground of the etching, kneels a young Stanisław Hozjusz (the future Bishop of Poznań), the author of the thesis discussing the Holy Virgin of Święta Lipka, whose portrait is reproduced in the backdrop of the composition. Numerous inscriptions addressed to the protectors of the author of the philosophical treatise—a characteristic feature of such graphical works—are deftly weaved into the composition of Siemiginowski’s Thesis. They explain that the structure in the etching is a symbolic representation of the Warmia diocese, with the Sanctuary of Święta Lipka at its heart.
‘Georgius Eleuter in. et pinxit.’, states the signature found in the mezzotint depicting the Bishop of Warmia Jan Stanisław Zbąski, while the name of de La Haye comes with the annotation ‘fecit Varsaviae’. Zbąski’s portrait by the engraver, based on a painting or drawn sketch by Siemiginowski, may have been produced concurrently with the Thesis with Święta Lipka. Seated on a pedestal and placed in an oval laurel wreath, the bust portrait of the Bishop is surrounded on either side by two genii holding the coats of arms of the Bishop and the Diocese of Warmia, as well as a crosier and a sword—the attributes of sacred and secular power of the Bishop of Warmia. The symbolism of the two spheres of power of the Bishop is completed with two putti holding a bishop’s mitre and a prince’s headdress, floating over the figures of the genii. The significance of the etching is enhanced with two inscriptions—one a dedication located on the pedestal, the other, contained in a ribbon weaved into the laurel framing of the portrait, consisting of a quote from Sirach pertaining to the Bishop: ‘Magnus secundum Nomen suum. Maximus in Salutem Electorum Dei. Ecclesiast. 46’. The name ‘Joannes’ inscribed next to the genius on the left appears to open the quotation.
The philosophical thesis defended by Andrzej Wołodkowicz at the Vilnius Academy in 1699 (Canones ex universa philosophia) was adorned with a portrait of Bishop Konstanty Kazimierz Brzostowski of the Strzemię coat of arms, produced by Charles de La Haye from an ‘invention’ by Siemiginowski—somewhat similar to the aforementioned depiction of Bishop Zbąski. Subscribing to the convention of bust portraits, both portrayals were embellished with allegorical images enhancing the composition and raising its significance. In the case of Brzostowski’s portrait, the composition is supplied not only with putti handling the insignia of bishop and prince, volumes, ribbons with inscriptions, and the coat of arms, but also sheep placed to the sides of the pedestal, which carries an inscription opening with ‘PASTORI SUO’. The portrait of Bishop Brzostowski—the last known common work by Siemiginowski and Charles de La Haye—proves that the cooperation between the painter and the etcher continued even after the death of Jan III and Prince Jakub’s failure in his pursuit of the throne of the Commonwealth, that is, the period when the two artists lost their patrons.
Though undated, an etching depicting Wojciech Męciński of the Poraj coat of arms—a Polish Jesuit tormented to death at Nagasaki, Japan, in 1643—signed ‘C. De la Haye fecit.’, could also have been produced in Warsaw. It portrays Męciński in profile, pressing the right hand to his chest while holding the Gospel in his left. Behind him, in the backdrop, are scenes from his martyrdom. Beneath the portrait, the engraver placed palm branches parting to the sides, hanging over an inscription cut in half by a cartouche with the coat of arms. The upper corners of the etching are adorned with roses. The small etching (128 by 88 mm), most likely a kind of devotional picture intended as a remembrance of the Polish Jesuit and his martyrdom, created a pattern for later depictions of the martyr.
Still in Warsaw in 1701 de La Haye produced the aforementioned portrait of Friedrich Büthner, Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy and Rector of the church of Saint John in Gdańsk, who died on 13 February of the same year, again using an ‘invention’ by Andreas Stech. The portrait, included in Johann Heinrich Nothwanger’s sermon Das richtige Prognosticon published in Gdańsk by Simon Reiniger, is the last known work by the Frenchman related to Gdańsk or the Commonwealth. Due to the loss of his patrons, or perhaps seeking to evade the impending Great Northern War which spread into the Commonwealth, Charles de La Haye left Warsaw.
He spent the next few years (ca. 1701–5) in Rome, again in the employ of the Rossis. Later, he presumably moved to Vienna. Here, he most likely produced the View of the Church of Saint Dorothea at Klosterneuburg and cooperated with other etchers (mostly from Augsburg), preparing illustrations for Entwurf einer historischen Architektur by Johann Bernard Fischer von Erlach, a work which included 93 copperplates presenting the history of architecture in different regions of the world, from King Salomon’s Temple to the Karlskirche in Vienna. De La Haye’s signature rests on a piece depicting seven vases, appended to the final fifth volume of the work devoted to vases (Divers Vases Antiques, Aegyptiens, Grecs, Romains & Modernes). The first edition of Entwurf einer historischen Architektur appeared in 1721, sixteen years after work on the publication begun. The final recorded work by Charles de La Haye is a signed and dated (1707) copperplate with an engraved inscription found in the cupola of the church of Saint Peter in Vienna.
Charles de La Haye numbered among the many artists of Europe who migrated between artistic centres, first to learn their trade, and then in search of employment. The years he spent in the Commonwealth resulted in works that can be counted among the best graphics produced in Poland in the second half of the seventeenth century.
Selected bibliography:
1. M. Karpowicz, Jerzy Eleuter Siemiginowski, malarz polskiego baroku (Wrocław–Warszawa–Kraków–Gdańsk, 1974).
2. A. Kurkowa, Grafika ilustracyjna gdańskich druków okolicznościowych XVII wieku (Wrocław–Warszawa–Kraków–Gdańsk, 1979).
3. J. Talbierska, ‘Charles de La Haye—rytownik francuski w Gdańsku i Warszawie’, in: A. Pieńkos and A. Rosales Rodriguez, eds., Francusko-polskie relacje artystyczne w epoce nowożytnej (Warszawa, 2010), p. 33–47.
4. J. Talbierska, Grafika XVII wieku w Polsce. Funkcje, ośrodki, artyści, dzieła (Warszawa, 2011).
5. K. Targosz, Jan Heweliusz, uczony-artysta (Wrocław–Warszawa–Kraków–Gdańsk–Łódź, 1986).
Translation: Antoni Górny
