Related Books from the Odum Library
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The Renaissance Engravers
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This ambitious work allows the reader to discover the art of engraving in Europe from the 15th to the 16th century. The engravings of the Renaissance masters are considered models of artistic perfection, often studied and frequently copied.
ISBN: 1783107219Publication Date: 2019-12-09 -
Painted Prints
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An old master print with color is almost invariably regarded as a suspect object because the color is presumed to be a cosmetic addition made to compensate for deficiencies of design or condition. Painted Prints challenges this deeply entrenched assumption about the material and aesthetic structure of old master prints by showing that in many cases hand coloring is not a dubious supplement to a print but is instead an integral element augmenting its expressive power, beauty, and meaning. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at The Baltimore Museum of Art and St. Louis Art Museum, Painted Prints reproduces and discusses a rich variety of hand-colored prints from Northern Europe of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Anonymous woodcuts are juxtaposed with masterworks by such famed artists as Dürer, Holbein, and Goltzius. These prints, secular as well as religious, muted as well as vibrant in tonality, make it clear that hand coloring was a widespread, enduring practice, developed to satisfy the demands of both elite and popular audiences. Painted Prints presents new research into the men and women who specialized in hand coloring and offers numerous insights into the social and economic organization of Renaissance and Baroque printmaking. It also draws on scientific analyses of the materials and techniques of hand coloring to address important questions of authenticity, chronology, and condition. With a catalogue and color illustrations of all the hand-colored prints in the exhibition, this book makes a groundbreaking contribution to the study of old master prints and their pivotal place in the visual culture of early modern Europe. The exhibition, "Painted Prints: The Revelation of Color in Northern Renaissance and Baroque Engravings, Etchings, and Woodcuts," will be at The Baltimore Museum of Art from October 6, 2002, to January 5, 2003 and St. Louis Art Museum from February 14 to May 18, 2003.
ISBN: 9780271022345Publication Date: 2002-10-11 -
The Print Before Photography
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Winner of the 2017 IFPDA Book Award, honouring excellence in research, scholarship, and the discussion of new ideas in the field of fine prints. Copper-plate printmaking, developed alongside Gutenberg's invention of moveable type, was a huge business employing thousands of people, and dominating image production for nearly four centuries across the whole of Europe. Its techniques and influence remained very stable until the nineteenth century, when this world was displaced by new technologies, of which photography was by far the most important. Print Before Photography examines the unrivalled importance of printmaking in its golden age, illustrated through the British Museum's outstanding collection of prints. This unique and significant book is destined to be a leading reference in print scholarship, and will be of interest to anyone with an interest in this era of art history.
ISBN: 9780714126951Publication Date: 2016-09-01 -
The Renaissance Print, 1470-1550
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Through an examination of material and institutional circumstances, through the study of work shop practices and of technical and aesthetic experimentation, this book seeks to give an account of the ways in which Renaissance prints were realized, distributed, acquired, and handled by their public.
ISBN: 0300068832Publication Date: 1996-09-25 -
Reading by Design
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Renaissance readers perceived the print book as both a thing and a medium - a thing that could be broken or reassembled, and a visual medium that had the power to reflect, transform, or deceive. At the same historical moment that print books remediated the visual and material structures of manuscript and oral rhetoric, the relationship between vision and perception was fundamentally called into question. Investigating this crisis of perception, Pauline Reid argues that the visual crisis that suffuses early modern English thought also imbricates sixteenth- and seventeenth-century print materials. These vision troubles in turn influenced how early modern books and readers interacted. Platonic, Aristotelian, and empirical models of sight vied with one another in a culture where vision had a tenuous relationship to external reality. Through situating early modern books' design elements, such as woodcuts, engravings, page borders, and layouts, as important rhetorical components of the text, Reading by Designarticulates how the early modern book responded to epistemological crises of perception and competing theories of sight.
ISBN: 9781487500696Publication Date: 2019-04-29 -
Image in Print
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Woodcuts are a unique resource in the study of late medieval and early modern books: they have much to tell us about how books were produced and for what purposes, about reading habits and developments in literacy, and about the part that books played in social, political, and religious change. The central focus of this volume is on the physical evidence - pictures and texts - provided by books produced during the pre- and early Reformation periods, ranging from the products of the earliest English printers such as William Caxton, Richard Pynson, and Wynkyn de Words, through woodcut images of holy women and black people, to books that were censored, defaced, and glossed by Protestant reformers.
ISBN: 9780712348331Publication Date: 2004-05-30 -
How to Identify Prints
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Is a particular print a woodcut, an etching, or a lithograph? Is it an original stipple engraving or a photogravure reproduction? Is the color printed or added by hand? Arranged in self-contained sections that can be consulted individually or as part of a larger research operation, this book helps identify accurately any printed image. Included are all the manual methods and also the mechanical processes that constitute the vast majority of printed images around us. In all, some ninety different techniques are described, both monochrome and color. Essential aspects of printing history and the printmaking craft receive full coverage, and examples are given of the features that reveal the type of print, such as varieties of line and tone. Of particular interest are the many illustrations of enlarged details showing the different appearance of various techniques under strong magnification. The one great change during the past twenty years has been the high-quality inkjet and laser prints that are now part of everyday life. How can one tell whether an attractive image is valuable in its own right or merely an appealing reproduction? As cheap printing becomes more sophisticated, it inevitably becomes harder to identify correctly an image of this kind. Bamber Gascoigne's new observations in this area, added for this revised edition, will prove invaluable. 275 illustrations, 40 in color.
ISBN: 0500284806Publication Date: 2004-05-17
References
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World History Encyclopedia - Life in a Renaissance Artist's WorkshopInformation on the operations of artisan workshops during the Renaissance.
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Italian Renaissance Learning Resources - The Making of an ArtistInformation on the training of apprentice artists in the Renaissance period in Italy.
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Encyclopedia.com - Art, Education and TrainingAn overview of how artists were trained during the Renaissance.
Life as a Renaissance Woodcutter
The woodcutters who designed and carved the illustrations for early printed works would have been craftsmen who followed a pathway familiar to any artist of the Renaissance, and even artisans of the medieval period.
A woodcutter might have once been the child of an artist or the child of someone with connections in the art production world, such as Albrecht Dürer who was initially in training to be a goldsmith by his father, or Hans Burgkmair who was initially trained to be a painter by his father. Regardless of the impact of family connections, children pursuing art would begin as apprentices at the workshops of a master artist.
These apprentices would perform menial tasks, learn to care for tools, prepare basic materials, and maintain the workshop, all under the direction and expectations of the artisans working there. At the same time, these apprentices would practice the skills needed to contribute to the workshop, mainly by learning the particular style of the master artist.
Once considered competent enough, an apprentice could be promoted to an assistantship role. They would contribute to the artwork by focusing on the less important, less skillful tasks, such as completing repetitive or time-consuming aspects of the work.
A competent assistant could then become a contributing artist, sometimes referred to as a journeyman out of the medieval tradition, though the master of the workshop might be the only one credited for the work produced by the workshop, as in the case of Virgil Sollis.
If an artist working under a master achieved recognition as a master themselves, they could open their workshops and create art credited to their name. Additionally, they could pursue commissions for projects from wealthy patrons that would fund the work of the workshop. An example of this is Emperor Maximilian I of the Holy Roman Empire contracting artisans to create his fictionalized biography, The White King, a page of which is among the artifacts in this collection.
When possible, artists often traveled to visit other artisans in major cities or areas and be influenced by the work and methods of peer artists. Albrecht Dürer and Hans Burgkmair are both examples of artists who traveled to gain experience, observe artistic developments in other regions, and improve their craft with historical documentation to corroborate their travels.
Woodcutters, specifically, were often not only woodcutters, but also painters, engravers, or draftsmen. Albrecht Dürer is credited as a painter, draughtsman, printmaker, and designer. Virgil Solis is credited as a printmaker, painter, and draughtsman. While some artists became especially known for their work as woodcutters, more often than not, successful artists worked in multiple mediums, with master artists utilizing their workshops to produce a wide range of art under their supervision.
Printing and woodcuts as early as 1470 were specifically viewed as a way for artist workshops to sell a wider range of art pieces. Expensive paintings, carvings, or engravings were remade as prints at a lower cost to sell to a wider audience of individuals who could not afford masterworks (Cartwright).
It is perhaps best to think of the production of woodcuts in the 16th century as one part of a large operation of many artists and artisans which was regularly producing various forms and types of art to sell to the wider public while depending on wealthy patrons for a primary source of funding and the production of masterpieces that would give the master artist, and through them their workshops, the reputation they needed for ongoing success and future patronage.
Block Printing: A Brief History
Book Arts Lab, Carleton University. (2022a). Block Printing – A Brief History. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl1UjvwAvao
