He was presented to Louis XIII., who at once commissioned him to engrave the "Siege of La Rochelle," and received at Court with remarkable favour, which was, however, withdrawn some years later, when he was bold enough to oppose the will of Richelieu. After the taking of Nancy (1633) from the Duke of Lorraine, Callot's sovereign, the great Cardinal, to immortalise the event, ordered the engraver to make it the subject of a companion print to that of the "Siege of La Rochelle," which he had just finished; but he was revolted by the idea of using his talents for the humiliation of his prince, and replied to Richelieu's messenger, "that he would rather cut off his thumb than obey." The reply was not of a kind to maintain him in the good graces of the Cardinal, and Callot felt it. He took leave of the king, and soon after retired to his native town, where he died at the age of forty-three.
Really introduced into France by Callot, etching had become the fashion there. Abraham Bosse and Israel Silvestre helped to popularise it, the latter by applying it to topography and architecture, the former by using it for the illustration of religious and scientific books, and the embellishment of the fans and other elegant knick-knacks then selling in that "Galerie Dauphine du Palays" which is figured in one of his prints, and from which a play of Corneille's derives its name. He published besides an infinite number of subjects of all sorts: domestic scenes, portraits, costumes, architectural ornaments, almost always engraved from his own designs, and sometimes from those of the Norman painter, Saint-Ygny.
[Illustration: FIG. 78.--CLAUDE LORRAINE.
Abraham Bosse is doubtless a second-rate man, but he is far from having no merit at all. He is an intelligent, if not a very delicate observer, who knows how to impart to his figures and to the general aspect of a scene an appearance of reality which is not altogether the truth, but which comes very near to having its charm. He certainly possesses the instinct of correct drawing, in default of refined taste and feeling; and finally, to take him simply as an engraver, he has much of the bold and firm handling of Callot, with something already of that cheerful and thoroughly French cleverness which was destined to be more and more developed in the national school of engraving, and to reach perfection in the second half of the seventeenth century.