Was the Way Primary Works of Art Were Reproduced

Work of art made press on paper in the West

An old master print is a work of fine art produced past a printing procedure within the Western tradition. The term remains electric current in the art trade, and there is no easy alternative in English to distinguish the works of "fine art" produced in printmaking from the vast range of decorative, utilitarian and pop prints that grew rapidly aslope the artistic impress from the 15th century onwards. Fifteenth-century prints are sufficiently rare that they are classed as old chief prints fifty-fifty if they are of crude or only workmanlike creative quality. A date of most 1830 is usually taken equally marker the finish of the menses whose prints are covered by this term.

The main techniques used, in order of their introduction, are woodcut, engraving, carving, mezzotint and aquatint, although there are others. Unlike techniques are often combined in a unmarried print. With rare exceptions printed on textiles, such every bit silk, or on vellum, old master prints are printed on newspaper. This article is concerned with the artistic, historical and social aspects of the subject; the article on printmaking summarizes the techniques used in making old master prints, from a modern perspective.

Many swell European artists, such as Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, and Francisco Goya, were defended printmakers. In their own day, their international reputations largely came from their prints, which were spread far more widely than their paintings. Influences between artists were also mainly transmitted beyond a single city by prints (and sometimes drawings), for the same reason. Prints therefore are often brought up in detailed analyses of individual paintings in art history. Today, thanks to colour photo reproductions, and public galleries, their paintings are much better known, whilst their prints are only rarely exhibited, for conservation reasons. Merely some museum impress rooms permit visitors to run into their drove, sometimes only by appointment, and large museums at present nowadays great numbers of prints online in very loftier-resolution enlargeable images.

History [edit]

Woodcut before Albrecht Dürer [edit]

The oldest technique is woodcut, or woodblock printing, which was invented as a method for printing on cloth in Cathay. This had reached Europe via the Islamic earth before 1300, as a method of printing patterns on textiles. Paper arrived in Europe, also from Red china via Islamic Espana, slightly later, and was being manufactured in Italian republic by the stop of the thirteenth century, and in Burgundy and Frg by the end of the fourteenth.^[1] Religious images and playing cards are documented as beingness produced on paper, probably printed, past a German in Bologna in 1395.^[2] However, the nigh impressive printed European images to survive from before 1400 are printed on cloth, for use equally hangings on walls or furniture, including altars and lecterns. Some were used as a pattern to embroider over. Some religious images were used as bandages, to speed healing.^[3]

The primeval impress images are more often than not of a loftier artistic standard, and were conspicuously designed by artists with a background in painting (on walls, panels or manuscripts). Whether these artists cut the blocks themselves, or only inked the pattern on the cake for another to cleave, is non known. During the fifteenth century the number of prints produced greatly increased as paper became freely bachelor and cheaper, and the boilerplate artistic level barbarous, so that by the second half of the century the typical woodcut is a relatively crude image. The great majority of surviving 15th-century prints are religious, although these were probably the ones more than likely to survive. Their makers were sometimes called "Jesus maker" or "saint-maker" in documents. Equally with manuscript books, monastic institutions sometimes produced, and ofttimes sold, prints. No artists can exist identified with specific woodcuts until towards the end of the century.^[4]

The little prove we have suggests that woodcut prints became relatively mutual and cheap during the fifteenth century, and were affordable by skilled workers in towns. For example, what may be the earliest surviving Italian print, the "Madonna of the Fire", was hanging past a nail to a wall in a small school in Forlì in 1428. The school caught fire, and the crowd who gathered to watch saw the print carried upwards into the air by the fire, before falling down into the oversupply. This was regarded as a miraculous escape and the impress was carried to Forlì Cathedral, where it remains, since 1636 in a special chapel, displayed once a year. Like the majority of prints before approximately 1460, only a unmarried impression (the term used for a copy of an erstwhile master print; "copy" is used for a impress copying another print) of this print has survived.^[5]

Anonymous German language 15th-century woodcut, almost 1480, with hand-colouring, including (unusually) spots of golden. 5.ii x 3.ix cm (like to the original size on near screens)

Woodcut blocks are printed with calorie-free pressure, and are capable of press several thousand impressions, and even at this menstruum some prints may well have been produced in that quantity. Many prints were mitt-coloured, mostly in watercolour; in fact the mitt-colouring of prints continued for many centuries, though dealers accept removed it from many surviving examples. Italia, Deutschland, French republic and kingdom of the netherlands were the main areas of product; England does non seem to have produced whatsoever prints until about 1480. However prints are highly portable, and were transported across Europe. A Venetian certificate of 1441 already complains virtually cheap imports of playing cards damaging the local industry.^[half-dozen]

Cake-books were a very popular grade of (curt) volume, where a folio with both pictures and text was cutting equally a unmarried woodcut. They were much cheaper than manuscript books, and were by and large produced in the netherlands; the Art of Dying (Ars moriendi) was the most famous; 13 different sets of blocks are known.^[seven] As a relief technique (run across printmaking) woodcut can be printed easily together with movable type, and after this invention arrived in Europe about 1450 printers quickly came to include woodcuts in their books. Some book owners besides pasted prints into prayer books in particular.^[8] Playing cards were another notable utilize of prints, and French versions are the basis of the traditional sets nonetheless in use today.

By the last quarter of the century at that place was a big demand for woodcuts for book-illustrations, and in both Deutschland and Italy standards at the tiptop stop of the market improved considerably. Nuremberg was the largest heart of German publishing, and Michael Wolgemut, the main of the largest workshop in that location worked on many projects, including the gigantic Nuremberg Relate.^[9] Albrecht Dürer was apprenticed to Wolgemut during the early stages of the project, and was the godson of Anton Koberger, its printer and publisher. Dürer'south career was to take the art of the woodcut to its highest development.^[ten]

German engraving before Dürer [edit]

Engraving on metallic was office of the goldsmith'south craft throughout the Medieval menses, and the idea of printing engraved designs onto paper probably began as a method for them to tape the designs on pieces they had sold. Some artists trained as painters became involved from nigh 1450–1460, although many engravers connected to come up from a goldsmithing background. From the start, engraving was in the hands of the luxury tradesmen, different woodcut, where at least the cutting of the block was associated with the lower-status trades of carpentry, and perhaps sculptural wood-etching. Engravings were too of import from very early on equally models for other artists, especially painters and sculptors, and many works survive, especially from smaller cities, which accept their compositions direct from prints. Serving equally a blueprint for artists may take been a primary purpose for the creation of many prints, particularly the numerous serial of campaigner figures.

The surviving engravings, though the majority are religious, show a greater proportion of secular images than other types of art from the catamenia, including woodcut. This is certainly partly the outcome of the relative survival rates—although wealthy fifteenth-century houses certainly contained secular images on walls (within and outside), and cloth hangings, these types of image accept survived in tiny numbers. The Church building was much better at retaining its images. Engravings were relatively expensive and sold to an urban middle-form that had become increasingly flush in the belt of cities that stretched from the netherlands down the Rhine to Southern Frg, Switzerland and Northern Italy. Engraving was also used for the same types of images equally woodcuts, notably devotional images and playing cards, but many seem to have been collected for keeping out of sight in an anthology or book, to gauge past the excellent land of preservation of many pieces of paper over 5 hundred years onetime.^[eleven]

Once again different woodcut, identifiable artists are plant from the start. The German, or possibly German-Swiss, Master of the Playing Cards was active by at least the 1440s; he was clearly a trained painter.^[12] The Principal E. Due south. was a prolific engraver, from a goldsmithing background, active from about 1450–1467, and the first to sign his prints with a monogram in the plate. He made significant technical developments, which immune more impressions to be taken from each plate. Many of his faces have a rather pudding-like appearance, which reduces the touch on of what are otherwise fine works. Much of his work notwithstanding has great charm, and the secular and comic subjects he engraved are almost never found in the surviving painting of the menses. Like the Otto prints in Italia, much of his work was probably intended to appeal to women.^[thirteen]

The kickoff major artist to engrave was Martin Schongauer (c. 1450–1491), who worked in southern Frg and was also a well-known painter. His father and blood brother were goldsmiths, so he may well accept had experience with the burin from an early historic period. His 116 engravings have a clear authority and beauty and became well known in Italian republic as well as northern Europe, likewise as much copied by other engravers. He also further adult engraving technique, in particular refining cantankerous-hatching to depict volume and shade in a purely linear medium.^[xiv]

The other notable artist of this period is known as the Housebook Main. He was a highly talented German artist who is also known from drawings, especially the Housebook album from which he takes his proper name. His prints were made exclusively in drypoint, scratching his lines on the plate to leave a much shallower line than an engraver's burin would produce; he may accept invented this technique. Consequently, only a few impressions could be produced from each plate—perhaps about twenty—although some plates were reworked to prolong their life. Despite this limitation, his prints were conspicuously widely circulated, as many copies of them exist by other printmakers. This is highly typical of admired prints in all media until at least 1520; at that place was no enforceable concept of anything like copyright. Many of the Housebook Master'due south impress compositions are simply known from copies, as none of the presumed originals have survived — a very loftier proportion of his original prints are only known from a single impression. The largest collection of his prints is at Amsterdam; these were probably kept as a collection, perchance by the artist himself, from around the time of their cosmos.^[15]

The first self-portrait, past the commencement man of affairs in the history of printmaking, Israhel van Meckenam, with his wife

Israhel van Meckenam was an engraver from the borders of Germany and the Netherlands, who probably trained with Main ES, and ran the most productive workshop for engravings of the century betwixt about 1465 and 1503. He produced over 600 plates, most copies of other prints, and was more sophisticated in cocky-presentation, signing afterward prints with his name and town, and producing the first print self-portrait of himself and his wife. Some plates seem to take been reworked more than one time by his workshop, or produced in more one version, and many impressions take survived, so his ability to distribute and sell his prints was evidently sophisticated. His ain compositions are often very lively, and take a great interest in the secular life of his 24-hour interval.^[16]

The earliest Italian engravings [edit]

Printmaking in woodcut and engraving both appeared in Northern Italia within a few decades of their invention north of the Alps, and had similar uses and characters, though inside significantly different artistic styles, and with from the outset a much greater proportion of secular subjects. The earliest known Italian woodcut has been mentioned above. Engraving probably came showtime to Florence in the 1440s; Vasari typically claimed that his fellow-Florentine, the goldsmith and nielloist Maso Finiguerra (1426–64) invented the technique. It is at present clear this is incorrect, and in that location are now considered to be no prints as such that can be attributed to him on anything other than a speculative basis. He may never have made whatever printed engravings from plates, equally opposed to taking impressions from work intended to be nielloed. In that location are a number of complex niello religious scenes that he probably executed, and may or may not accept designed, which were influential for the Florentine style in engraving. Some paper impressions and sulphur casts survive from these. These are a number of paxes in the Bargello, Florence, plus one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York which depict scenes with large and well-organised crowds of small figures. There are likewise drawings in the Uffizi, Florence that may be by him.^[17]

Florence [edit]

Where German engraving arrived into a still Gothic artistic world, Italian engraving caught the very early Renaissance, and from the kickoff the prints are generally larger, more open up in atmosphere, and characteristic classical and exotic subjects. They are less densely worked, and usually practice non use cantankerous-hatching. From about 1460–1490 two styles adult in Florence, which remained the largest center of Italian engraving. These are called (although the terms are less often used now) the "Fine Manner" and the "Wide Way", referring to the typical thickness of the lines used. The leading artists in the Fine Manner are Baccio Baldini and the "Chief of the Vienna Passion", and in the Broad Mode, Francesco Rosselli and Antonio del Pollaiuolo, whose only print was the Battle of the Nude Men (right), the masterpiece of 15th-century Florentine engraving.^[18] This uses a new zigzag "return stroke" for modelling, which he probably invented.^[19]

A chance survival is a collection of more often than not rather crudely executed Florentine prints now in the British Museum, known as the Otto Prints afterward an earlier owner of most of them. This was probably the workshop's ain reference set of prints, mostly circular or oval, that were used to decorate the inside covers of boxes, primarily for female person use. It has been suggested that boxes so decorated may take been given every bit gifts at weddings. The subject matter and execution of this group suggests they were intended to appeal to centre-form female sense of taste; lovers and cupids grow, and an allegory shows a near-naked immature human being tied to a stake and being beaten by several women.^[20]

Ferrara [edit]

The other notable early centre was Ferrara, from the 1460s, which probably produced both sets of the so-called "Mantegna Tarocchi" cards, which are non playing cards, simply a sort of educational tool for young humanists with fifty cards, featuring the Planets and Spheres, Apollo and the Muses, personifications of the Vii liberal arts and the iv Virtues, as well every bit "the Conditions of Man" from Pope to peasant.^[21]

Mantegna in Mantua [edit]

Andrea Mantegna who trained in Padua, and so settled in Mantua, was the nigh influential figure in Italian engraving of the century, although information technology is still debated whether he actually engraved whatever plates himself (a debate revived in recent years past Suzanne Boorsch). A number of engravings have long been ascribed to his school or workshop, with but vii usually given to him personally. The whole group form a coherent stylistic grouping and very clearly reverberate his mode in painting and drawing, or re-create surviving works of his. They seem to date from the late 1460s onwards.^[23]

The touch of Dürer [edit]

In the last five years of the fifteenth century, Dürer, then in his belatedly twenties and with his ain workshop in Nuremberg, began to produce woodcuts and engravings of the highest quality which spread very chop-chop through the artistic centres of Europe. By virtually 1505 well-nigh young Italian printmakers went through a phase of directly copying either whole prints or large parts of Dürer's landscape backgrounds, before going on to arrange his technical advances to their ain style. Copying of prints was already a large and accepted part of the printmaking culture only no prints were copied every bit frequently as Dürer's.^[24]

Dürer was besides a painter, but few of his paintings could be seen except past those with good access to private houses in the Nuremberg surface area. The lesson of how he, following more spectacularly in the footsteps of Schongauer and Mantegna, was able so quickly to develop a continent-wide reputation very largely through his prints was non lost on other painters, who began to take much greater involvement in printmaking.^[25]

Italy 1500–1515 [edit]

For a brief menstruum a number of artists who began past copying Dürer made very fine prints in a range of private styles. They included Giulio Campagnola, who succeeded in translating the new way Giorgione and Titian had brought to Venetian painting into engraving. Marcantonio Raimondi and Agostino Veneziano both spent some years in Venice before moving to Rome, merely even their early on prints show classicizing tendencies too as Northern influence.^[26] The styles of the Florentine Cristofano Robetta, and Benedetto Montagna from Vicenza are even so based in Italian painting of the menstruation, and are as well afterwards influenced by Giulio Campagnola.^[27]

Giovanni Battista Palumba, in one case known every bit "Primary IB with the Bird" from his monogram, was the major Italian creative person in woodcut in these years, likewise as an engraver of charming mythological scenes, frequently with an erotic theme.^[28]

The rise of the reproductive print [edit]

Prints copying prints were already common, and many fifteenth century prints must take been copies of paintings, but not intended to be seen as such, only as images in their own correct. Mantegna'southward workshop produced a number of engravings copying his Triumph of Caesar (now Hampton Court Palace), or drawings for it, which were perhaps the first prints intended to exist understood as depicting paintings—chosen reproductive prints. With an increasing pace of innovation in fine art, and of a critical interest amidst a non-professional public, reliable depictions of paintings filled an obvious demand. In time this need was almost to smother the old master impress.^[29]

Dürer never copied whatever of his paintings straight into prints, although some of his portraits base a painting and a print on the aforementioned cartoon, which is very similar. The side by side stage began when Titian in Venice, and Raphael in Rome, almost simultaneously began to collaborate with printmakers to make prints to their designs. Titian at this stage worked with Domenico Campagnola and others on woodcuts, whilst Raphael worked with Raimondi on engravings, for which many of Raphael'southward drawings survive.^[30] Rather later, the paintings washed past the School of Fontainebleau were copied in etchings, apparently in a brief organised programme including many of the painters themselves.^[31]

The Italian partnerships were artistically and commercially successful, and inevitably attracted other printmakers who simply copied paintings independently to make wholly reproductive prints. Particularly in Italy, these prints, of greatly varying quality, came to dominate the market and tended to push out original printmaking, which declined noticeably from about 1530–40 in Italy. Past at present some publisher/dealers had become important, especially Dutch and Flemish operators similar Philippe Galle and Hieronymus Cock, developing networks of distribution that were becoming international, and much work was deputed past them. The effect of the evolution of the print-selling trade is a matter of scholarly controversy, but there is no question that past the mid-century the charge per unit of original printmaking in Italy had declined considerably from that of a generation earlier, if not as precipitously equally in Germany.^[32]

The North after Dürer [edit]

Although no artist anywhere from 1500 to 1550 could ignore Dürer, several artists in his wake had no difficulty maintaining highly distinctive styles, oftentimes with piffling influence from him. Lucas Cranach the Elder was only a yr younger than Dürer, but he was about thirty before he began to brand woodcuts, in an intense Northern style reminiscent of Matthias Grünewald. He was also an early experimenter in the chiaroscuro woodcut technique. His way afterward softened, and took in the influence of Dürer, only he concentrated his efforts on painting, in which he became ascendant in Protestant Germany, based in Saxony, handing over his very productive studio to his son at a relatively early historic period.^[33]

Lucas van Leyden had a biggy natural talent for engraving, and his before prints were highly successful, with an often earthy handling and brilliant technique, so that he came to be seen as Dürer's primary rival in the Northward. However, his later prints suffered from straining afterwards an Italian grandeur, which left simply the technique applied to far less dynamic compositions. Like Dürer, he had a "flirtation" with etching, just on copper rather than fe. His Dutch successors for some time continued to be heavily under the spell of Italia, which they took most of the century to assimilate.^[34]

Albrecht Altdorfer produced some Italianate religious prints, but he is most famous for his very Northern landscapes of drooping larches and firs, which are highly innovative in painting every bit well every bit prints. He was among the most effective early users of the technique of etching, recently invented equally a printmaking technique by Daniel Hopfer, an armourer from Augsburg. Neither Hopfer nor the other members of his family who continued his style were trained or natural artists, merely many of their images have keen amuse, and their "ornament prints", made substantially as patterns for craftsmen in various fields, spread their influence widely.^[35]

Hans Burgkmair from Augsburg, Nuremberg's neighbour and rival, was slightly older than Dürer, and had a parallel career in some respects, grooming with Martin Schongauer before apparently visiting Italian republic, where he formed his own synthesis of Northern and Italian styles, which he applied in painting and woodcut, generally for books, but with many significant "single-foliage" (i.e. private) prints. He is at present by and large credited with inventing the coloured chiaroscuro (coloured) woodcut.^[36] Hans Baldung was Dürer's pupil, and was left in accuse of the Nuremberg workshop during Dürer's 2d Italian trip. He had no difficulty in maintaining a highly personal fashion in woodcut, and produced some very powerful images.^[37] Urs Graf was a Swiss mercenary and printmaker, who invented the white-line woodcut technique, in which his near distinctive prints were fabricated.^[38]

The Lilliputian Masters [edit]

The Footling Masters is a term for a group of several printmakers, who all produced very pocket-size finely detailed engravings for a largely bourgeois market place, combining in miniature elements from Dürer and from Marcantonio Raimondi, and concentrating on secular, often mythological and erotic, rather than on religious themes. The near talented were the brothers Bartel Beham and the longer-lived Sebald Beham. Similar Georg Pencz, they came from Nuremberg and were expelled past the council for atheism for a period. The other master member of the grouping was Heinrich Aldegrever, a convinced Lutheran with Anabaptist leanings, who was perhaps therefore forced to spend much of his time producing decoration prints.^[39]

Another convinced Protestant, Hans Holbein the Younger, spent near of his adult career in England, then and for long after too primitive as both a market and in technical assist to support fine printmaking. Whilst the famous blockcutter Hans Lützelburger was alive, he created from Holbein'southward designs the famous minor woodcut series of the Dance of Expiry. Another Holbein series, of 90-ane Quondam Testament scenes, in a much simpler style, was the most popular of attempts past several artists to create Protestant religious imagery. Both series were published in Lyon in France by a German language publisher, having been created in Switzerland.^[40]

Afterwards the deaths of this very brilliant generation, both the quality and quantity of High german original printmaking suffered a strange plummet; perhaps it became impossible to sustain a convincing Northern fashion in the face of overwhelming Italian productions in a "commoditized" Renaissance mode. The netherlands now became more important for the production of prints, which would remain the case until the late 18th century.^[41]

Mannerist printmaking [edit]

Some Italian printmakers went in a very different direction to either Raimondi and his followers, or the Germans, and used the medium for experimentation and very personal work. Parmigianino produced some etchings himself, and also worked closely with Ugo da Carpi on chiaroscuro woodcuts and other prints.^[42]

Giorgio Ghisi was the major printmaker of the Mantuan school, which preserved rather more individuality than Rome. Much of his work was reproductive, but his original prints are often very fine. He visited Antwerp, a reflection of the power the publishers there now had over what was now a European market for prints. A number of printmakers, mostly in carving, continued to produce excellent prints, only mostly as a sideline to either painting or reproductive printmaking. They include Battista Franco, Il Schiavone, Federico Barocci and Ventura Salimbeni, who but produced ix prints, presumably considering it did non pay. Annibale Carracci and his cousin Ludovico produced a few influential etchings, while Annibale'south brother Agostino engraved. Both brothers influenced Guido Reni and other Italian artists of the full Baroque period in the adjacent century.^[43]

French republic [edit]

The Italian artists known as the School of Fontainebleau were hired in the 1530s by King Francis I of France to decorate his showpiece Chateau at Fontainebleau. In the course of the long projection, etchings were produced, in unknown circumstances but apparently in Fontainebleau itself and generally in the 1540s, mostly recording wall-paintings and plasterwork in the Chateau (much at present destroyed). Technically they are mostly rather poor—dry out and uneven—but the all-time powerfully evoke the foreign and sophisticated atmosphere of the time. Many of the best are past Leon Davent to designs by Primaticcio, or Antonio Fantuzzi. Several of the artists, including Davent, later went to Paris and connected to produce prints there.^[44]

Previously the but consequent printmaker of stature in France had been Jean Duvet, a goldsmith whose highly personal style seems halfway between Dürer and William Blake. His plates are extremely crowded, not conventionally well-fatigued, but full of intensity; the opposite of the languorous elegance of the Fontainebleau prints, which were to have the greater effect on French printmaking. His prints date from 1520 to 1555, when he was seventy, and completed his masterpiece, the xx-three prints of the Apocalypse.^[45]

The Netherlands [edit]

Cornelius Cort was an Antwerp engraver, trained in Cock's publishing house, with a controlled but vigorous style, and excellent at depicting dramatic lighting effects. He went to Italia and in 1565 was retained by Titian to produce prints of his paintings (Titian having secured his "privileges" or rights to exclusively reproduce his own works). Titian took considerable trouble to get the issue he wanted; he said that Cort could not work from the painting lonely, so he produced special drawings for him to utilise. Eventually, the results were highly effective and successful, and after Titian's death Cort moved to Rome, where he taught a number of the virtually successful printmakers of the side by side generation, notably Hendrik Goltzius, Francesco Villamena and Agostino Carracci, the last major Italian artist to resist the spread of etching.^[46]

Goltzius, arguably the final great engraver, took Cort's fashion to its furthest point. Because of a babyhood accident, he drew with his whole arm, and his utilise of the swelling line, altering the profile of the burin to thicken or diminish the line as it moved, is unmatched. He was extraordinarily prolific, and the artistic, if not the technical, quality of his piece of work is very variable, merely his finest prints look frontwards to the energy of Rubens, and are as sensuous in their employ of line as he is in paint.^[47]

At the same time Pieter Brueghel the elder, another Cort-trained artist, who escaped to pigment, was producing prints in a totally dissimilar style; beautifully drawn but just engraved. He but etched one plate himself, a superb landscape, the Rabbit Hunters, but produced many drawings for the Antwerp specialists to work up, of peasant life, satires, and newsworthy events.^[48]

Meanwhile, numerous other engravers in the Netherlands continued to produce vast numbers of reproductive and illustrative prints of widely varying degrees of quality and entreatment—the 2 by no means always going together. Notable dynasties, oft publishers as well equally artists, include the Wierix family unit, the Saenredams, and Aegidius Sadeler and several of his relations. Philippe Galle founded another long-lived family business organization. Theodor de Bry specialised in illustrating books on new colonial areas.^[49]

17th century and the age of Rembrandt [edit]

The 17th century saw a continuing increment in the volume of commercial and reproductive printmaking; Rubens, like Titian before him, took great pains in adapting the trained engravers in his workshop to the particular style he wanted, though several found his demands likewise much and left.^[50] The generation after him produced a number of widely dispersed printmakers with very individual and personal styles; by now etching had get the normal medium for such artists.

Rembrandt bought a printing-printing for his firm in the days of his early on prosperity, and continued to produce etchings (always so called collectively, although Rembrandt mixed techniques past adding engraving and drypoint to some of his etchings) until his bankruptcy, when he lost both firm and press. Fortunately his prints take always been keenly collected, and what seems to exist a high proportion of his intermediate states accept survived, oft in only 1 or 2 impressions. He was clearly very directly involved in the printing process himself, and probably selectively wiped the plate of ink himself to produce furnishings surface tone on many impressions. He also experimented continually with the effects of different papers. He produced prints on a wider range of subjects than his paintings, with several pure landscapes, many cocky-portraits that are often more extravagantly fanciful than his painted ones, some erotic (at any charge per unit obscene) subjects, and a great number of religious prints. He became increasingly interested in strong lighting effects, and very nighttime backgrounds. His reputation as the greatest etcher in the history of the medium was established in his lifetime, and never questioned since. Few of his paintings left Holland whilst he lived, only his prints were circulated throughout Europe, and his wider reputation was initially based on them alone.^[51]

A number of other Dutch artists of the century produced original prints of quality, mostly sticking to the same categories of genre they painted. The eccentric Hercules Seghers and Jacob van Ruisdael produced landscapes in very small quantities, Nicolaes Berchem and Karel Dujardin Italianate landscapes with animals and figures, and Adriaen van Ostade peasant scenes. None was very prolific, but the Italianate landscape was the near popular type of subject; Berchem had a greater income from his prints than his paintings.^[52]

"Massacre of the Innocents", past Callot, 13.vii 10 10.5 cm, showing the apply of multiple stoppings-out

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione grew upward in Genoa and was profoundly influenced by the stays there of Rubens and van Dyck when he was a young artist. His carving technique was extremely fluent, and in all mediums he oft repeats the same few subjects in a large number of totally different compositions. His early prints include a number of bravura treatments of classical and pastoral themes, whilst later religious subjects predominate. He also produced a large series of small heads of exotically dressed men, which were ofttimes used by other artists. He was technically innovative, inventing the monotype and also the oil sketch intended to be a concluding production. He, like Rembrandt, was interested in chiaroscuro effects (contrasts of light and night), using a number of very different approaches.^[53]

Jusepe de Ribera may have learned etching in Rome, merely all his fewer than xxx prints were made in Naples during the 1620s when his career as a painter seems to have been in the doldrums. When the painting commissions began to flow again, he all but abandoned printmaking. His plates were sold after his expiry to a Rome publisher, who made a better task of marketing them than Ribera himself. His powerful and direct style developed almost immediately, and his subjects and style remain close to those of his paintings.^[54]

Jacques Bellange was a court painter in Lorraine, a world that was to vanish abruptly in the Thirty Years State of war soon later his death. No surviving painting of his tin can be identified with confidence, and virtually of those sometimes attributed to him are unimpressive. His prints, mostly religious, are Baroque extravaganzas that were regarded with horror past many 19th century critics, just take come up strongly back into fashion—the very unlike Baroque style of some other Lorraine artist Georges de La Tour has enjoyed a comparable revival. He was the showtime Lorraine printmaker (or creative person) of stature, and must have influenced the younger Jacques Callot, who remained in Lorraine but was published in Paris, where he profoundly influenced French printmaking.^[55]

Callot'south technical innovations in improving the recipes for carving ground were crucial in allowing etching to rival the item of engraving, and in the long term spelt the finish of artistic engraving. Previously the unreliable nature of the grounds used meant that artists could not run a risk investing too much effort in an etched plate, equally the work might be ruined by leaks in the basis. Equally, multiple stoppings-out, enabling lines etched to unlike depths by varying lengths of exposure to the acid, had been too risky.^[56] Callot led the mode in exploiting the new possibilities; most of his etchings are small merely full of tiny detail, and he adult a sense of recession in landscape backgrounds in etching with multiple bitings to etch the groundwork more lightly than the foreground. He also used a special etching needle chosen an échoppe to produce swelling lines similar those created past the burin in an engraving, and too reinforced the etched lines with a burin afterward biting; which soon became common practice amid etchers. Callot etched a cracking diverseness of subjects in over 1400 prints, from grotesques to his tiny but extremely powerful series Les Grandes Misères de la guerre.^[57] Abraham Bosse, a Parisian illustrative etcher popularized Callot's methods in a hugely successful transmission for students. His own piece of work is successful in his declared aim of making etchings look similar engravings, and is highly evocative of French life at the middle of the century.

Wenzel Hollar was a Bohemian (Czech) artist who fled his land in the Thirty Years War, settling by and large in England (he was besieged at Basing House in the English Civil War, and and then followed his Royalist patron into a new exile in Antwerp, where he worked with a number of the big publishers at that place). He produced not bad numbers of etchings in a straightforward realist style, many topographical, including large aerial views, portraits, and others showing costumes, occupations and pastimes.^[58] Stefano della Bella was something of an Italian counterpart to Callot, producing many very detailed small etchings, but also larger and freer works, closer to the Italian drawing tradition.^[59] Anthony van Dyck produced just a big serial of portrait prints of contemporary notables, the Iconographia for which he only etched a few of the heads himself, just in a brilliant fashion, that had neat influence on 19th century etching.^[threescore] Ludwig von Siegen was a German soldier and courtier, who invented the technique of mezzotint, which in the hands of better artists than he was to become an important, more often than not reproductive, technique in the 18th century.^[61]

The final third of the century produced relatively piffling original printmaking of nifty interest, although illustrative printmaking reached a high level of quality. French portrait prints, most frequently copied from paintings, were the finest in Europe and often extremely brilliant, with the school including both etching and engraving, oftentimes in the aforementioned work. The most important artists were Claude Mellan, an etcher from the 1630s onwards, and his contemporary Jean Morin, whose combination of engraving and etching influenced many later artists. Robert Nanteuil was official portrait engraver to Louis 14, and produced over two hundred brilliantly engraved portraits of the court and other notable French figures.^[62]

Fine art of printmaking later Rembrandt'due south decease [edit]

The extremely pop engravings of William Hogarth in England were little concerned with technical printmaking furnishings; in many he was producing reproductive prints of his ain paintings (a surprisingly rare matter to do) that just set out to convey his crowded moral compositions as clearly as possible. Information technology would not be possible, without knowing, to distinguish these from his original prints, which have the same aim. He priced his prints to reach a middle and fifty-fifty upper working-form market, and was brilliantly successful in this.^[63]

Canaletto was likewise a highly successful painter, and though his relatively few prints are vedute, they are rather dissimilar from his painted ones, and fully aware of the possibilities of the etching medium. Piranesi was primarily a printmaker, a technical innovator who extended the life of his plates beyond what was previously possible. His Views of Rome—well over a hundred huge plates—were backed by a serious understanding of Roman and modern compages and brilliantly exploit the drama both of the ancient ruins and Baroque Rome. Many prints of Roman views had been produced before, but Piranesi's vision has get the benchmark. Gianbattista Tiepolo, virtually the end of his long career produced some brilliant etchings, subjectless capricci of a landscape of classical ruins and pine copse, populated past an elegant band of cute young men and women, philosophers in fancy dress, soldiers and satyrs. Bad-tempered owls look down on the scenes. His son Domenico produced many more etchings in a similar way, but of much more conventional subjects, often reproducing his father's paintings.^[64]

The technical ways at the disposal of reproductive printmakers continued to develop, and many superb and sought-after prints were produced by the English mezzotinters (many of them in fact Irish) and by French printmakers in a variety of techniques.^[65] French attempts to produce high quality colour prints were successful by the concluding office of the century, although the techniques were expensive. Prints could now be produced that closely resembled drawings in crayon or watercolours. Some original prints were produced in these methods, but few major artists used them.^[66]

The rise of the novel led to a demand for small-scale, highly expressive, illustrations for them. Many fine French and other artists specialised in these, simply clearly continuing out from the pack is the piece of work of Daniel Chodowiecki, a High german of Shine origin who produced over a g small etchings. Mainly illustrations for books, these are wonderfully fatigued, and follow the spirit of the times, through the cult of sentiment to the revolutionary and nationalist fervour of the start of the 19th century.^[67]

Goya'southward superb but violent aquatints ofttimes look every bit though they are illustrating some unwritten work of fiction, but their pregnant must be elucidated from their titles, often containing several meanings, and the cursory comments recorded by him about many of them. His prints prove from early the macabre world that appears merely in hints in the paintings until the final years. They were nigh all published in several series, of which the most famous are: Caprichos (1799), Los desastres de la guerra (The Disasters of State of war from afterward 1810, but unpublished for fifty years after). Rather too many further editions were published after his death, when his delicate aquatint tone had been worn down, or reworked.^[68]

William Blake was as technically unconventional equally he was in bailiwick-matter and everything else, pioneering a relief etching procedure that was later to become the dominant technique of commercial illustration for a time. Many of his prints are pages for his books, with text and image on the same plate, as in the 15th century block-books.^[69] The Romantic Movement saw a revival in original printmaking in several countries, with Germany taking a big part once again; many of the Nazarene movement were printmakers.^[70] In England, John Sell Cotman etched many landscapes and buildings in an constructive, straightforward style. J. M. W. Turner produced several print series including ane, the Liber Studiorum, which consisted of seventy-i etchings with mezzotint that were influential on mural artists; according to Linda Hults, this serial of prints amounts to "Turner's manual of landscape types, and ... a statement of his philosophy of landscape."^[71] With the relatively few etchings of Delacroix the period of the one-time principal print tin can be said to come to an end.^[72]

Printmaking was to revive powerfully later in the 19th and 20th centuries, in a great diverseness of techniques. In particular the Etching Revival, lasting from about the 1850s to the 1929 Wall Street crash rejuvenated the traditional monochrome techniques, fifty-fifty including woodcut, while lithography gradually became the most important printmaking technique over the aforementioned menstruation, especially as information technology became more constructive in using several colours in the aforementioned impress.^[73]

Inscriptions [edit]

Printmakers who signed their work often added inscriptions which characterised the nature of their contribution.

A list with their definitions includes:^[74]

Ad vivum indicates that a portrait was done "from life" and not later a painting, east.yard., Aug. de St. Aubin al vivum delin. et sculp.
Aq., aquaf., aquafortis denote the etcher
D., del., delin., delineavit refer to the draughtsman
Des., desig. refer to the designer
Direx., Direxit. show direction or superintendence of pupil by master
Ex., exc., excu., excud., excudit, excudebat indicate the publisher
F., fe., f^t, fec., fec^t, fecit, fa., fac., fac^t, faciebat indicate past whom the engraving was "fabricated" or executed
Formis , like excudit , describes the act of publication
Imp. indicates the printer
Inc., inci., incid., incidit, incidebat refer to him who "incised" or engraved the plate
Inv., invenit, inventor mark the "inventor" or designer of the moving-picture show
Lith. does not hateful "lithographed by," but "printed by". Thus, Lith. de C. Motte, Lith. Lasteyrie, I. lith. de Delpech refer to lithographic printing establishments
P., pictor, pingebat, pinx, pinx^t, pinxit show who painted the picture show from which the engraving was fabricated
Southward., sc., scul., sculpsit, sculpebat, sculptor announced afterward the engraver'due south proper name

Notes [edit]

^ Griffiths (1980), 16.
^ Field, Richard (1965). Fifteenth Century Woodcuts and Metalcuts. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art.
^ Hind (1935).
^ Landau and Parshall, one–6, quotes 2, 33–42. Mayor, 5–10.
^ Mayor, 10.
^ Mayor, fourteen–17.
^ Mayor, 24–27.
^ A number have survived pasted on the inside of the lids of boxes or chests, like this case.
^ Landau and Parshall, 34–42. Mayor, 32–lx. Bartrum (1995), 17–19.
^ Bartrum, 17–63. Landau and Parshall, 167–174.
^ Landau and Parshall, 46–51, 64.
^ Shestack (1967a), numbers 1–2. Mayor, 115–117.
^ Shestack (1967b). Shestack (1967a), numbers 4–19. Spangeberg, 1–iii. Mayor, 118–123. Landau and Parshall, 46–50.
^ Shestack (1967a), numbers 34–115. Landau and Parshall, l–56. Mayor, 130–135. Spangeberg, v–7. Bartrum, 20–21.
^ Filedt Kok. Mayor, 124–129.
^ Landau and Parshall, 56–63. Mayor, 138–140.
^ Levinson. Landau and Parshall, 65.
^ Langdale. Landau and Parshall, 65, 72–76.
^ Langdale.
^ Landau and Parshall, 89. Levinson.
^ Landau and Parshall, 71–72. Spangeberg, 4–v.
^ Levinson, no. 83.
^ Landau and Parshall, 65–71. Mayor, 187–197. Spangeberg, 16–17.
^ Bartrum (2002). Bartrum (1995), 22–63. Landau and Parshall, see alphabetize. Mayor, 258–281.
^ Pon. Landau and Parshall, 347–358. Bartrum (1995), nine–11.
^ Pon. Landau and Parshall, see alphabetize.
^ Levinson, 289–334, 390–414. Landau and Parshall, 65–102 (meet too alphabetize). Mayor, 143–156, 173, 223, 232.
^ Levinson, 440–455. Landau and Parshall, 199, 102.
^ Pon. Landau & Parshall, chapter Four, whose accent is disputed past Bury, nine–12.
^ Pon. Landau and Parshall, 117–146.
^ Jacobson, parts III and IV.
^ Landau and Parshall develop the traditional view of pass up, which Bury contests in his Introduction, pp. 9–12, and seeks to demonstrate the contrary view throughout his work.
^ Bartrum (1995), 166–178.
^ Landau and Parshall, 316–319, 332–333, 333 quoted.
^ Mayor, 228, 304–308, 567. Bartrum (1995), 11–12, 144, 158, 183–197. Landau and Parshall, 323–328 (Hopfers); 202–209, 337–346 (Altdorfer).
^ Bartrum (1995), 130–146. Landau and Parshall, encounter alphabetize, 179–202 on the chiaroscuro woodcut.
^ Bartrum (1995), 67–80.
^ Bartrum (1995), 212–221.
^ Bartrum (1995), 99–129. Mayor, 315–317. Landau and Parshall, 315–316.
^ Bartrum (1995), 221–237.
^ Bartrum (1995), 12–13.
^ Landau and Parshall, 146–161.
^ Bury. Reed and Walsh, 105–114 on Annibale and subsequent artists in etching. Mayor, 410, 516.
^ Jacobson, parts III and Iv. Mayor, 354–357.
^ Marqusee. Jacobson, part Two. Mayor, 358–359.
^ Mayor, 403–407, 410.
^ Mayor, 419–421. Spangeberg, 107–108.
^ Mayor, 422–426.
^ Mayor, 373–376, 408–410.
^ Mayor, 427–432.
^ White; Mayor, 472–505; Spangeberg, 164–168.
^ Mayor, 467–471. Spangeberg, 156–158 (Seghers), 170 (van Ostade), 177 (Berchem).
^ Reed and Wallace, 262–271. Mayor, 526–527.
^ Reed and Wallace, 279–285.
^ Griffiths and Hartley. Jacobson, part X. Mayor, 453–460.
^ Mayor, 455–460.
^ Hind (1923), 158–160.
^ Mayor, 344.
^ Reed and Wallace, 234–243. Mayor, 520–521, 538, 545.
^ Mayor, 433–435.
^ Griffiths (1980), 83–88. Mayor, 511–515.
^ Mayor, 289–290.
^ Mayor, 550–555.
^ Mayor, 576–584.
^ Griffiths (1996), 134–158 on English language mezzotints and their collectors.
^ Spangeberg, 221–222. Mayor, 591–600.
^ Mayor, 568, 591–600.
^ Bareau. Mayor, 624–631.
^ Mayor, 608–611. Spangeberg, 262.
^ Griffiths and Carey.
^ Hults, 522.
^ Spangeberg, 260–261
^ Mayor, 660 onwards. Spangeberg, 263 onwards.
^ Weintenkampf, 278–279.

References [edit]

Bareau, Juliet Wilson, Goya'due south Prints, The Tomás Harris Collection in the British Museum, 1981, British Museum Publications, ISBN 0-7141-0789-1
Bartrum, Giulia (1995), German language Renaissance Prints, 1490–1550. London: British Museum Printing ISBN 0-7141-2604-7
Bartrum, Giulia (2002), Albrecht Dürer and his Legacy. London: British Museum Press ISBN 0-7141-2633-0
Bury, Michael; The Print in Italia, 1550–1620, 2001, British Museum Press, ISBN 0-7141-2629-2
Filedt Kok, J.P. (ed.), Livelier than Life, The Chief of the Amsterdam Cabinet, or the Housebook Master 1470–1500, Rijksmuseum/Garry Schwartz/Princeton University Press, 1985, ISBN 90-6179-060-3 / ISBN 0-691-04035-4
Griffiths, Antony (1980), Prints and Printmaking; 2nd ed. of 1986 used, British Museum Press ISBN 0-7141-2608-X
Griffiths, Antony and Carey, Francis; German Printmaking in the Age of Goethe, 1994, British Museum Press, ISBN 0-7141-1659-9
Griffiths, Antony & Hartley, Craig (1997), Jacques Bellange, c. 1575–1616, Printmaker of Lorraine. London: British Museum Press ISBN 0-7141-2611-X
Griffiths, Antony, ed. (1996), Landmarks in Print Collecting: connoisseurs and donors at the British Museum since 1753. London: British Museum Press ISBN 0-7141-2609-8
Hind, Arthur M. (1923), A History of Engraving and Etching. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Co. (reprinted by Dover Publications, New York, 1963 ISBN 0-486-20954-7)
Hind, Arthur 1000. (1935), An Introduction to a History of Woodcut. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Co. (reprinted by Dover Publications, New York, 1963 ISBN 0-486-20952-0)
Hults, Linda, The Impress in the Western World: An Introductory History, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 1996,
Karen Jacobson, ed (often wrongly cat. as Georg Baselitz), The French Renaissance in Prints, 1994, p. 470; Grunwald Center, UCLA, ISBN 0-9628162-ii-1
Landau, David & Parshall, Peter (1996), The Renaissance Impress. New Haven: Yale U. P. ISBN 0-300-06883-2
Langdale, Shelley, Battle of the Nudes: Pollaiuolo's Renaissance Masterpiece, The Cleveland Museum of Fine art, 2002.
Levinson, J. A., ed., Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Fine art. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art LCCN 73-79624
Michael Marqusee, The Revelation of Saint John; Apocalypse Engravings past Jean Duvet, Paddington Press, London, 1976, ISBN 0-8467-0148-0
Mayor, A. Hyatt, Prints and People, Princeton, NJ: Metropolitan Museum of Fine art/Princeton U. P. ISBN 0-691-00326-2, Prints & people: a social history of printed pictures fully online from the MMA
Pon, Lisa, Raphael, Dürer, and Marcantonio Raimondi, Copying and the Italian Renaissance Impress, 2004, Yale UP, ISBN 978-0-300-09680-4
Reed, Sue Welsh & Wallace, Richard, eds. (1989) Italian Etchers of the Renaissance and Baroque. Boston, Mass.: Museum of Fine Arts ISBN 0-87846-306-ii
Shestack, Alan (1967a) Fifteenth-century Engravings of Northern Europe. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art LCCN 67-29080 (Catalogue)
Shestack, Alan (1967b), Main E.S.Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art
Spangeberg, M. L., ed., Six Centuries of Principal Prints. Cincinnati: Cincinnati Fine art Museum ISBN 0-931537-15-0
Weitenkampf, Frank (1921). How to Appreciate Prints, third revised edition (at Internet Archive). New York: Charles Scribner'due south Sons.
White, Christopher, The Late Etchings of Rembrandt. London: British Museum/Lund Humphries

External links [edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Prints.

The Printed Paradigm in the Due west: History and Techniques from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Timeline of Art
Big listing of links to museum etc. online images of old master prints
Washington Post review of NGA exhibition on C15 German woodcuts
Old master prints web log

howardhictin.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_master_print