Editing Jacques Callot (section)

==Technical innovations: échoppe, new hard ground, stopping-out==
[[File:Jacques Callot Massacre des Innocents.jpg|thumb|upright|right|Massacre of the Innocents, showing the use of multiple stoppings-out to create the fainter lines of the distant view. 13.7&nbsp;x&nbsp;10.5&nbsp;cm]]
His technique was exceptional, and was helped by important technical advances he made. He developed the échoppe, a type of etching-needle with a slanting oval section at the end, which enabled etchers to create a swelling line, as engravers were able to do.

He also seems to have been responsible for an improved recipe for the etching ground that coated the plate and was removed to form the image, using [[lute]]-makers [[varnish]] rather than a wax-based formula.  This enabled lines to be etched more deeply, prolonging the life of the plate in printing, and also greatly reducing the risk of "foul-biting", such that acid gets through the ground to the plate where it is not intended to, producing spots or blotches on the image.  Previously the risk of foul-biting had always been present, preventing an engraver from investing too much time on a single plate that risked being ruined by foul-biting. Now etchers could do the very detailed work that was previously the monopoly of engravers, and Callot made good use of the new possibilities.

He also made more extensive and sophisticated use of multiple "stoppings-out" than previous etchers had done.  This is the technique of letting the acid dissolve lightly over the whole plate, then stopping-out those parts of the work which the artist wishes to keep shallow by covering them with ground before bathing the plate in acid again. He achieved unprecedented subtlety in effects of distance and light and shade by careful control of this process. Most of his prints were relatively small – as much as about six inches or 15&nbsp;cm on their longest dimension.

One of his devotees, the Parisian [[Abraham Bosse]] spread Callot's innovations all over Europe with the first published manual of etching, which was translated into Italian, Dutch, German and English.
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