Placing Prints: New Developments
in the Study of Print, 1400-1800
Joint Annual Renaissance Early Modern Postgraduate Symposium
Friday 12 and Saturday 13 February 2016
The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN
PROGRAMME DAY ONE
KENNETH CLARK LECTURE THEATRE
09.30 – 10.00 REGISTRATION
10.00 – 12.00 POP UP DISPLAY: Courtauld Prints: The Making of a Collection
PRINTS AND DRAWINGS STUDY ROOM
POSTER SESSION
RESEARCH FORUM
Lunch (not provided)
12.30 – 12.40 INTRODUCTION
12.40 – 13.10 OPENING KEYNOTE
ANTONY GRIFFITHS (Former Keeper of Prints and Drawings Study Room, British Museum, and CoFounder of Print Quarterly): Changing Approaches to the History of the Print
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13.10 – 14.25 PANEL 1: THEORY
Chair: Sheila McTighe (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
BARBARA STOLTZ (Philipps Universität Marburg): The Theory of Printmaking in the Early Modern
Age
How is printmaking defined within the discussion about the different kinds of arts and their
hierarchy in Renaissance theory? Is there an essential theory of printmaking in the Early Modern Age,
before treatises such as John Evelyn’s Sculptura of 1662?
This paper would like to present the main results from the DFG project on printmaking theory, showing
an overview of definitions of printmaking within Renaissance theory and discussing the following two
questions:
How printmaking was defined in comparison to other arts in the Renaissance? This is actually
a question indeed all authors of art treatises are conscious of, some of them, Benvenuto Cellini or
Matthias Quad von Kinckelbach for instance, are determined in their definitions of printmaking as
sculpture. Others, like Vasari, give an ambivalent meaning of printmaking between drawing and
painting. The definition of printmaking depends therefore on the definition of sculpture, painting and
drawing and due to the comparison of the printmaking within these arts.
Was the Renaissance theory of the arts aware of the essential characteristics of printmaking
and its techniques? Here emerges, for example, not only the controversial question of “reproductive”
printmaking, such as in Vasari’s or Baglione’s Vite, but above all the question of perspective within the
description of printmaking, like Matthias Quad’s consideration of the plates as the only, actual work of
art.
The focus in the discussion of these issues will be directed on the most important and wellknown art treatises of Vasari, Karel van Mander, Cellini and Quad, demonstrating that the theory of
printmaking was always an inherent part of the general theory of the arts before the integration of
printmaking into the academic arts of the 18th century.
NAOKO TAKAHATAKE (Los Angeles County Museum of Art): Carlo Cesare Malvasia’s Felsina
pittrice and the Early Catalogue of Prints
The Felsina pittrice (1678) written by the canon and professor of law Carlo Cesare Malvasia is
a history of painting in his native Bologna related through the lives of the city’s most important artists.
At the heart of the undertaking was Malvasia’s desire to preserve and promote the Bolognese heritage
of painting. Printmaking occupied a privileged place within this tradition and was critical to shaping and
commemorating the Bolognese school. As such, the city’s rich print production earns its own chapter
in the Felsina pittrice, titled “The life of Marcantonio Raimondi and other Bolognese printmakers; on
their prints, the prints after their works, or prints by our artists after the works of others”. This chapter
opens with a biography of Marcantonio and is followed by catalogues of prints by and after the
principal Bolognese masters of the 16th and 17th centuries (including Marcantonio, Giulio Bonasone,
Primaticcio, the Carracci and their followers, Guido Reni, Simone Cantarini, Guercino). For the
number of prints recorded, the quality of the descriptions and the accuracy of the attributions, the Life
of Marcantonio is the most ambitious and remarkable catalogue of prints published in the 17th century.
With the stated aim of recording the complete printed œuvre of the Bolognese masters, it represents
the first example of a catalogue raisonné of an entire school of printmakers -- a fact heretofore
overlooked in the scholarship.
Malvasia’s extended treatment of prints responded to the interests of a bourgeoning circle of
amateurs and collectors, providing them with a new and valuable resource. Described as “fort précis”
in the Journal des savants (1677) and “fort curieux” by Jean Mariette (1718), Malvasia’s catalogues
were regarded early on as authoritative for verifying attributions, and as such helped guide the
amateur in identifying prints and giving order to a collection. Although critical commentary does not
occupy a large part of his text, he nonetheless appraises technique and style, and occasionally
remarks on copies, re-engraving, differences between states, and rarity.
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Taking his catalogue of over 200 prints by Agostino Carracci as a model, this paper will
analyse how Malvasia’s compilation functions as a proto-catalogue raisonné. What organizing
principles and descriptive strategies did Malvasia deploy in the individual entries? How well do his
written descriptions enable the identification of prints? What do his descriptions reveal about his
appreciation of the quality, value and function of prints? And why did he include his print catalogues in
his history of paintings? The early development of the print catalogue has remained little studied in
the historiography. This paper aims to shed light on the methods Malvasia applied in cataloguing
prints and to establish the historical importance of his pioneering text.
BEN THOMAS (University of Kent): Poussin and the Theory of Hatching
Compared with Rubens before him, or his own contemporary Simon Vouet, Nicolas Poussin
showed little interest in collaborating with printmakers. Writing to Cassiano dal Pozzo in 1642, Poussin
dismissed the engravings produced after his designs by Claude Mellan for the Imprimerie Royale as
‘bagatelles’. A conversation between Poussin’s patron Paul Fréart de Chantelou and Gianlorenzo
Bernini in 1665 reveals that Poussin considered Mellan’s distinctive single-hatching technique to be
deficient in rendering half tones and that he thought the engraver was principally concerned with not
spoiling his ‘beaux traits’. This tension between technique and translation was one that was keenly felt
among Poussin’s supporters, notably Chantelou’s brother, Roland Fréart de Chambray, who promoted
the comparative analysis of prints in his writings on the visual arts as a superior method to ekphrastic
description in determining the rules of art. It was all the more important, therefore, to establish a theory
of hatching, if engravings were to play such a significant role in the theory of art: ‘what a misfortune it
is for a painter to fall into the hands of a bad engraver’, Chambray complained. This paper will analyse
the evidence for attempts to regularize engraving technique in the prints and writings of French
printmakers connected to Poussin, including Abraham Bosse, Claude Mellan, Robert Nanteuil and
Giles Rousselet. It will also aim to situate some of Poussin’s characteristic statements on art theory in
debates implicating engraving, and to discuss the artist’s ambivalent attitude towards printmaking.
14.55 – 16.10 PANEL 2: CIRCULATION
Chair: Mark McDonald (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
STEPHANIE PORRAS (Tulane University): Going Viral St Michael the Archangel: Spiritual, Visual and
Material Translations from Antwerp to Lima
Maerten de Vos’s St Michael the Archangel was perhaps the first print design to
circumnavigate the globe. In some respects, the extraordinary worldwide success of this print is
unsurprising. The print is dedicated to Benito Arias Montano, Philip II’s royal librarian at the Escorial
palace, at the very centre of a Habsburg empire upon which the sun never set. Yet the print’s
complicated origin, designed by a Lutheran in war-torn Antwerp, and its various material translations –
as the basis of paintings in Spain and Latin America, further prints in Venice and Antwerp, ivory
sculptures in South Asia – require explanation: just how did this print travel from Antwerp to Madrid?
Or from Madrid to Lima, or from Europe to South Asia? Why was this particular print so popular? De
Vos’s design is certainly an unusual depiction of the archangel Michael. De Vos’s saint wields no
sword; instead, he bears only a martyr’s palm of victory and a ring of Latin text around his open right
hand. The militant victor here is transformed into a beatific, graceful figure.
This essay reconstructs the complex political and religious circumstances of this print’s
publication, as well as the image’s diverse paths of circulation and consumption in the first fifty years
after its initial appearance in Antwerp. My aim is to trace a cultural biography of this print, as it moved
across space and time: as a gift, a commodity, and as a pedagogical and missionary tool of colonial
power. Rather than studying individual versions or copies of St. Michael the Archangel in isolation, this
paper considers the print’s iterative redeployments in various materials and diverse cultural contexts in
order to better understand the mechanics of this print’s ambition, circulation and ultimately, its global
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success.
CASEY K. LEE (Queen’s University, Canada): Inspiration Integrated: The Work of Adriaen van
Nieulandt (1586-1658)
The Dutch artist and art dealer Adriaen van Nieulandt owned over fifty books and 1,300 prints
and drawings at the time of his death in 1658. Accumulated over a career spanning fifty years
painting, frequenting art sales, working with dealers, and maintaining close ties with the artistic
communities in Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Rome, Van Nieulandt’s collection and oeuvre offer insights
into the impact of works on paper on artists’ painting and dealing practices. The presence of prints and
drawings in artists’ workshops and their uses as visual reference tools and objects for inspiration is
generally accepted, but little has been said about these practices beyond the studios of Rembrandt
van Rijn and Peter Paul Rubens. An investigation of less well-studied artists’ collections of works on
paper will demonstrate the widespread use and circulation of prints and drawings in seventeenthcentury Europe. Van Nieulandt’s work and collection exemplifies these practices as his paintings,
particularly from the latter half of his career, reveal a heavy reliance on the work of other masters. By
cross-referencing inventory records of his collection of works on paper with his paintings, I will discuss
prints and their role in the propagation of forms and styles beyond the confines of time period and
location while also highlighting the problems inherent in using only estate inventories in the
investigation of early modern collecting.
LORENZO FATTICIONI (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa): The Transmission of the Sculptural
Canon: Copies, Derivations and the Circulation of the ‘Virtual Museum’ of François Perrier’s Segmenta
signorum et statuarum
This paper concerns the examination of the numerous editions of the Segmenta nobilium
signorum statuarum by François Perrier and the analysis of its many copies. These editions have
contributed enormously to the spread of the sculptural canon at the very base of art education in all
European Art Academies. The drawing up of a list of editions from the original copper plates has been
particularly complicated by the early presence, in the book market, of very detailed copies realised
directly from the original editions. The study of the chalcographic techniques practiced in the
seventeenth-century allowed the identification of a Roman editorial series, printed from a parallel set
of copper plates, which until a short time ago, were ignored or confused with the original set of
Segmenta copper plates. This study also allowed for the detection of different poles of imitation of the
work, mainly concentrated in the Netherlands. The speech will concern both technical aspects of print
production (for example the technique of transfer with sanguine, probably used in the De' Rossi print
shop for making exact copies from the original copperplates by Perrier no longer available in Rome
after 1646) and some cultural and market trends explaining the articulated geography of the spread of
the Segmenta (reprints in France, luxury copies in the Netherlands, absence of copies in France,
institutional copies in Italy etc.).
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16.10 – 17.00 PANEL 3: COLOUR
Chair: Martin Clayton (Royal Collection Trust)
ELIZABETH SAVAGE (John Rylands Research Institute, University of Manchester): ‘Whitewashing’
the Early Modern Print
Images printed in colour surround us, and we take for granted that they can decorate walls and
explain ideas in textbooks. However, six hundred years ago, as the printing press was emerging,
colour-printed images were new and extraordinary. As materials were developed and technologies
were disseminated across Europe during the sixteenth century, which was both the formative period
and golden age of printmaking, the possibility of printing woodcuts in colour profoundly changed visual
communication.
Astonishingly, the brightly printed colour inks of hundreds upon hundreds of sixteenth-century
woodcuts have been invisible for centuries. The Neoclassical pursuit of visual purity, which also led
once-vivid marble sculptures from classical antiquity to be literally and academically whitewashed for
generations, has written out printed colour so fully from the history of graphic art that there is still no
descriptive vocabulary for it. Research in fields from the history of art to Reformation-era visual culture
and the history of medicine remains underpinned by the assumption that colour prints could not have
existed during this time, and the few well-known exceptions have been dismissed as peculiar outliers.
This paper will explore the ramifications of the historiographical heritage of the graphic arts,
taking early modern colour woodcuts as a case study. It will address the origins of this bias against
colour as well as the myths that arose to justify its perpetuation. Finally, it will explore how the
systematic overlooking of printed colour redefined not only our understanding of the past, but also of
the objects on which that understanding is based.
AD STIJNMAN (Herzog August Library, Wolfenbüttel/Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum): Not for the
Feeble of Mind: Colour Printed Illustrations in European Medical Literature 1500–1850
Until recently, the history of early modern colour prints focussed on a few groups of singlesheet impressions, particularly chiaroscuro woodcuts. Colour printed medical illustrations are rarely
discussed, because they are in libraries rather than print collections and as their colour printing is not
catalogued.
By having been granted stack access to consult 15,000 volumes of medical literature in the
Herzog August Library, Wolfenbüttel, I found 125 early modern medical books with colour printed
illustrations. Some of the over 700 colour prints they contain are known, such as works by Jan
Ladmiral and Jacques Fabien Gautier, because these are also kept as single sheet prints in print
rooms. But scholarship is unaware of many others. This wealth of material disappeared for centuries,
because it falls between modern disciplines: bibliographers study texts in books, art historians study
single-sheet prints, and historians of medicine do not study colour printing.
From 1750 medical illustrations of extreme naturalism were in demand, employing the same
colour printmaking techniques as contemporary single-sheet colour prints. These anatomies,
infections, tumours and children’s diseases, all depicted in exact detail with natural colours, use
common printmaking techniques to depict information for a professional audience. Such prints are of
fundamental importance to the history of medicine; for the first time doctors could see functional
illustrations alongside the medical case studies described. Today we can also see them as art works,
some produced by leading printmakers, that change the history of colour printing and that happen to
be overlooked because they are in books.
17.00 – 17.30
Break
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17.30 – 18.45 PANEL 4: APPROPRIATION AND ADAPTATION
(Chair: Guido Rebecchini, The Courtauld Institute of Art)
JAMIE GABBARELLI (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.): Tales Retold: Renaissance Images
on Paper, Maiolica, and Bronze
The notion that early modern prints played a role in spreading individual styles and
iconographic motifs is familiar to art historians, particularly to scholars of Renaissance ceramics and
bronzes. Until very recently, however, print scholars have not engaged closely with these rich sources
of information, sometimes even overlooking book illustration, whose context is conterminous with the
single-sheet print. This paper, born of the research for a forthcoming exhibition, challenges these
subdivisions by exploring the overlapping relationships between prints, books, ceramics, and small
bronzes, highlighting the fertile impact the new technology of print had on the creation of works in
other portable media in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In turn, the study of the creative
adaptations of Francesco Xanto Avelli (ca. 1487-ca. 1542) and unknown masters in istoriato painting,
as well as of the learned derivations of Moderno (1467-1528) and Giovanni Bernardi (1494-1553) in
bronze or crystal, affords fresh historical insight not only into where or when certain prints were
available, but also into which subjects were used most often, and for how long. This multifocal
perspective vividly illustrates the cross-cultural reach of printed images and the markedly eclectic
tastes of early modern artists and patrons, thereby providing a more nuanced understanding of print
production, distribution, and use.
URSULA WEEKES (The Courtauld Institute of Art): The Impact of European Engravings at the
Mughal Court in India during the Late 16th and Early 17th Centuries
In 1580 the Mughal Emperor Akbar invited Portuguese Jesuits to his court at Agra to explain
Christianity. They came laden with illustrated books and engravings, which were made available to
painters in the imperial painting workshops almost immediately. This marked the beginning of a
sustained encounter with European art, which continued in the early seventeenth century as English
and Dutch merchants and ambassadors arrived at the Mughal court. Mughal painters such as Kesu
Das and Abu’l Hasan made close copies of European engravings, as well as actually painting over
engravings themselves.
But Mughal artists also engaged in highly inventive forms of assimilation, selectively borrowing
motifs and concepts from European engravings, while ignoring their European iconographic
imperatives. In this way, artists such as Basawan and Manohar played with European visual idioms,
drawing them into a wider framework of Persian and Indian subjects and styles. The Mughals were
clearly fascinated by these ambiguous images, whose multivalence resonated with the hybridity of
Mughal religious, social and literary culture.
JOÃO R. FIGUEIREDO (Universidade de Lisboa): Guido Reni Amongst the Flemish and Germans:
The Role of Northern European Prints in his Art
The importance of Northern Renaissance and early Baroque prints for Bolognese painting of
the first decades of the 17th century is still to be fully app raised. Although it is known, for instance,
that so prolific and demanded an artist as Guido Reni drew heavily on Dürer's woodcuts, few
examples of such borrowing or influence have been presented so far. As Guido's frescoed half-dome
above St. Dominic's tomb in Bologna was unveiled, his former teacher Ludovico Carracci accused the
painting of being a "warehouse of Flemish cloths". The invective recalls the opposition between
Northern attention to detail and Italian focusing on disegno (as put forth, e.g., by Michelangelo), but
Saint Dominic's billowing garments also path the way to such examples of overflowing emotion as
Bernini's Saint Theresa. Dürer's woodcuts were thus transferred into a Bolognese context and turned
out, with hindsight, to be the forerunners of the Italian Baroque. Some paintings by Guido Reni are
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therefore a kind of chronological hinge, and that sounds enticing enough to deserve further inquiry.
This is the occasion to analyse a few examples of Guido's dependence on Northern models, including
prints after his contemporary Flemish colleague P. P. Rubens, the mediating role of which, along with
Dürer's, was of paramount importance for the development of his mature style.
18.45 – 19.35 PANEL 5: PRINT AND DIGITAL HUMANITIES
Chair: Ben Thomas (University of Kent)
SILVIA URBINI (Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice): Census of the Italian Renaissance Woodcuts, a
presentation co-written by Laura Aldovini, David Landau and Silvia Urbini
The project we would like to present aims to recover and inventory the single-leaf woodcuts
produced in Italy between the invention of the medium and 1550, and include them in a database to
be made available online. Woodcuts, both as single sheets and as book illustrations, are the
‘Cinderella’ of printmaking research, a discipline that has benefited from important but intermittent
studies. The first and most evident result of the creation of such a Census would be to retrieve
unknown or little-known artworks scattered in many different places.
We will examine the single-leaf prints belonging to the most important museums, libraries,
archives and in public and private collections in Italy and abroad, as well as those put up for sale by
dealers and auction houses over the last century or so. We will use the images from incunabula and
16th-century illustrated books as a help and guide for the chronology, location and attribution of the
woodcuts in the Census. The digital archive will also serve as a basis for creating a constantly
updated network for the benefit both of the institutions that possess the material and of scholars.
Our paper would also like to present some examples of what this type of investigation can
provide in relation to the attribution of works, iconographic sources, circulation and re-use of images.
A catalogue of comparative images would make it possible to construct figurative categories
and group styles into families, thus recognizing new artistic personalities or enriching the catalogue of
already known masters and monogrammists.
STÉPHANE ROY (Carleton University, Canada): Looking at Print Advertisements in 18th-Century
France: A Digital Initiative
Over the past 20 years, several museums, universities and research groups have taken the
“digital turn” and made their collections or findings available online. Among the best-known resources
(to name a few) are the Getty Provenance Index and, more recently, Stanford’s Mapping the Republic
of Letters. Print scholars are familiar with George McKee’s Image of France which provides a
searchable index of prints registered through the French “dépôt légal”. One major resource, however,
seems to have fallen through the cracks of Digital Humanities: the advertisement of prints in 18thcentury periodicals. These commercial inserts are of prime importance for anyone studying 18thcentury prints and print culture because of the factual and chronological information they provide on
specific prints. When taken as a whole, however, these ephemeral snippets allow the reconstitution of
artistic circles and cultural networks, providing unsuspected insights on popular topics and fashion;
they constitute a significant yet neglected corpus of art criticism. The importance of this source
material has not been questioned, but the positive implications of its use have never been fully
grasped by scholars most often overwhelmed by the meticulous research needed to document
individual artworks. This paper will demonstrate, through a few case studies, the potential and
usefulness of a newly developed database of 18th century print advertisements, in preparation for its
public launch in the summer of 2016.
19.35 – 20.00 RECEPTION
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PROGRAMME DAY TWO
KENNETH CLARK LECTURE THEATRE (KCLT) & RESEARCH FORUM
09.00 – 09.30 REGISTRATION
09.30 – 10.50 PANEL 6: PRINT PROCESSES
Chair: Stephanie Buck (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden)
KCLT
NIKKI OTTEN (University of Minnesota): Acid Test: The Etching Process and Imagination in Francisco
Goya’s Los Caprichos
The aquatint shadows of Francisco Goya’s 1799 print series, Los Caprichos, are rife with
witches, bogeymen and chimeras carrying out perplexing rituals. Goya’s emphasis on these monsters
lurking in the imagination challenged eighteenth-century Enlightenment ideals, which valued the logic
and rationality necessary to interpret information gained through sensory engagement with the world.
While several philosophers were sceptical of the imagination, Goya adopted it as a marker of
his creative abilities and artistic vision. Once he set his power of fantasy free, however, he was unable
to fully recapture it.
In this paper, I argue that the etching process Goya used for Los Caprichos can be seen as a
metaphor for imagination unchecked by reason. This idea places etching in opposition to engraving,
which has been positively associated with imprinting knowledge in the mind. Scholars who trace this
intellectual history do not distinguish between engraving and etching, instead granting both intaglio
processes the same role within early modern models of memory. I assert that, because of the very
means by which they are achieved, etchings provide a more suitable example of how the rational,
almost mechanical, process of knowledge production can go awry.
Though the acid that etches the copperplate usually acts in compliance with the artist’s
designs, it always threatens to seep under the carefully laid ground and create unexpected effects. In
Los Caprichos, false biting and other printing errors demonstrate the truth of Goya’s imagery, which
presents the imagination as an unpredictable force with the power to spawn monsters.
JENNIFER CHUONG (Harvard University): Paradoxical Grounds: Print and Colonial Settlement in the
Eighteenth-Century Transatlantic World
Printed images of the New World have contributed significantly to scholarly discussions of
colonialism and encounter. Formal, iconographic, and contextual analyses have unpacked the
ideologies embedded in these images, but to date print's processes and their relationship to
colonialism have received little scholarly attention. In this paper I look closely at the material and
technical aspects of two print types - the engraving and the mezzotint - to show how they mirror a
crucial ideological shift in the second half of the eighteenth century, as classical economic models
characterized by stability gave way to modern models defined by transience.
Engraving, long recognized as a workshop analogue to farming in that the engraver’s burin
laboriously ploughs the copper matrix in order to obtain a sustained and reliable yield, seems like the
perfect medium for images of early American settlement, whose purpose was to encourage
investment in the colonies. However, this metaphor is overturned by the fact that the cleared land -that
is, the land which has been most altered - is identical with the light tone of minimally worked copper. In
other words, the magnitude of the colonists’ efforts is signified by the minimization of the engraver’s.
This inversion gestures towards a new commitment to rapid, short-lived products, which defined both
print production (in the form of the mezzotint and imperial markets in the later eighteenth century. By
attending to these contradictions, I suggest that print's procedures offer a new perspective onto prints
as commodities whose consumption and production embodied the shifts of colonial discourse.
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JONAS BEYER (Freelance Curator based Hamburger Kunsthalle): The Value of Unfinished Prints
Peter Parshalls ground-breaking exhibition “The Unfinished Print” (2004) has given rise to
questions regarding the discursive implications of publishing prints in different states or to pull just one
or two single impressions. It goes without saying that these forms of printmaking are contradicting the
purely reproductive function of prints. Instead, we are confronted with highly inventive prints, which
either lay their interests on process-related questions or trying to push the possibilities of
straightforwardness to its outmost boundaries. In the wake of Parshall’s exhibition other efforts were
made to face this phenomenon, if we think of the recent exhibition at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum
(Cologne) dealing with the “Abklatsch” (contre-épreuve) in 2014 or the launched section “Preparatory
drawing, proof print & counterproof” which will be part of the forthcoming congress of the VKKS in
Basle (June 2016). But is it possible for us as historians to tell how these “unfinished prints” were
esteemed by a wider audience in their own times? And where are the limits for us to elevate these
kinds of prints up to the level of autonomous works of art? My paper wants to dig into these questions
and likes to discuss them with regard to the prints of artists ranging from Rembrandt and Castiglione
to Piranesi and Meryon.
09.30 – 10.50 PANEL 7: FINDING A PLACE
Chair: Naomi Lebens (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
RESEARCH FORUM
CATHERINE MCCORMACK (University College London): Printing the Underside: the ‘Domine Quo
Vadis?’ footprint stone in Early Modern Rome
From the ninth century, a stone, on which it was believed the footprints of Christ were
impressed as he appeared to St. Peter after the resurrection, marked the entry point into Rome in the
Domine Quo Vadis? chapel. Around 1616 this stone was duplicated and placed in the nearby church
of S.Sebastiano fuori le mura. In the same period, an anonymous engraver translated this important
contact relic of the feet into a vernacular devotional print, thus mediating the cult object in new ways
around the city. While recent scholarship has been concerned with the translation of other indexical
contact relics that rely on the act of impression, such as the duplication of the Holy Face into printed
images, the underside of the body, this opposite (sur)face that is rarely seen, has been largely
neglected despite its centrality in ritual practice in early modern Rome.
Perhaps this is because the footprint is a slippery sign, after all, as the register of the body on
the material surface of the environment it is inscribed with the continuing presence of the body that
made it, and yet is a presence that relies wholly on the absence of that body. This paper will explore
the ways in which the mechanically printed image both negotiates and makes visible the complex
issues of translating the imprint of the sole of the foot, and the attempts to locate the bodily imprint
among other printed forms such as writing and the representational image in the early modern period.
LIZZIE MARX (University of Cambridge) ‘Play, Women & Wine Makes a Man Laugh till he Dies of it’:
A pack of Proverb Playing Cards in English, French and Italian, London, c.1737
Since the moment that popular prints were sold, their economic, historical and artistic values
have been lamentably taken for granted. Scholarship has placed prints at the ‘periphery’, using print
culture as a conduit to enrich the oeuvre of celebrated artists. This remains the case with research into
playing cards. This lecture hails the first ever in-depth study of the Proverb Playing Cards (London,
c.1737), a fascinating complete pack of 52 cards with each face engraved with the suit and a different
proverb demonstrated by male and female figures. The proverbs are written below in English,
curiously followed below by French or Italian translations. The ‘peripheral’ nature of these playing
cards will be challenged, through examining the vibrant card playing culture in the early eighteenth
century London and the different networks involved in the production and playing of the pack. The
proverbial iconography of two of the cards from the pack will be interrogated, including the intriguing
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proverb, ‘a woman and a melon is not to be known by their looks and outside’. The playing cards will
also be explored in a wider circle of gendered moralising handbooks, revealing that the Proverb
Playing Cards were not only used for linguistic and intellectual development, but also as a confidante
to reassure its rising middle-class users on the moralistic dilemmas they typically faced.
FELICITY MYRONE (The British Library): The Place of Prints at The British Library
The British Library holds a vast number of prints, mainly as plates in printed books of all genres
(literary, scientific, topographic etc), but also in newspapers, as ephemera such as greetings cards, as
single sheets and in albums. The place of prints in the Library’s institutional history and connoisseurial
hierarchies has and continues to influence their accessibility and research.
Prints have been neglected due both to the overwhelming volume of material and the
perception of their relative ‘insignificance’ in the context of a national library where text has always
taken precedence. Nineteenth century classification has led to them being deprioritised in traditional
catalogue records and, consequently, many have been lost sight of. Such catalogues imposed
classification systems which may have had little relation to the material’s original format or use; the
attitudes of curators reflected that of scholarship at the time, with many collections divided up between
Prints and Drawings and the library departments of the then British Museum according to whether the
images were valued as autonomous ‘art’ or formed supporting ‘evidence’ for largely text-based
research. Recent scholarship at the Library has included a strategic focus on externally funded
research on George III’s maps and views, re-evaluating the genre of topography, arguing for a
complex reading which encompasses a broad range of media and participants with varying, shifting
motives – the place of prints is still being determined.
10.50 – 11.20 Break
11.20 - 12.35 PANEL 8: REPRODUCTION
Chair: Edward Wouk (University of Manchester)
KCLT
ANNE BLOEMACHER (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster): Multiplied Madonnas - Strategies
of Commercializing Raphael in Print
Several engravings after Raphael’s Madonna di Foligno were produced during the artist’s
lifetime. None of these prints is a proper reproduction of the painting. All three only refer to the group
of the Madonna and child on clouds, therefore fragmenting the larger composition of a sacra
conversazione. The first engraving by Raimondi that will be discussed in this context is based on an
early invention by Raphael for the Madonna di Foligno. The poses of Mary and Jesus differ from the
painting and are rather related to Raphael’s earlier Madonna-paintings. The publication of an unused
invention shows that Raphael appreciated the new medium to release designs that were eventually
not executed in painting. Raimondi’s inclusion of Raphael’s Madonna in a Northern landscape copied
after Dürer and Lucas van Leyden is telling: the best of Italian art is multiplied in combination with the
best of Northern art (out of an Italian perspective).
The second engraving by Raimondi relies on Raphael’s Madonna di Foligno as well, but the
poses of Mary and the Christ Child vary. This print dates some time later then the painting. I argue that
Raphael reworked his invention for the group of Mary and Jesus to improve the interaction between
mother and child and published this ameliorated invention in print. Its multiplication is all the more
interesting because the Madonna di Foligno was the first altarpiece (and one of few works by Raphael
at all) to be shown in a “public sphere”.
The third engraving represents a completely different strategy of copying and multiplication. It
was made by Giovanni Antonio da Brescia who was, as I will argue, not part of the “Raphael-Team”.
The engraver based his print on one of Raimondi’s Madonna di Foligno engravings. Not only is
Raphael’s invention abbreviated, the technique is very coarse as well: the print is apparently not made
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for connoisseurs. This is underlined by the inscription on the print, saying in Italian that the owner of
this image is save against the plague. In this case the multiple does not function as an aesthetic object
but has a religious/cultic function.
SIMON TURNER (Compiler and editor for the New Hollstein-series): Spot the Difference: Rubens and
the Reproductive Print
Rubensʼ close involvement in printmaking is a remarkable episode in the history of printmaking
and he set new standards in terms of output and quality. This paper will explore the evolving working
processes that Rubens developed with a succession of printmakers and discusses the differences
between his paintings and the reproductive prints. Rubensʼ corrections of highlights and shadows, as
well as more radical adjustments to the compositions, made the prints diverge from the original
paintings. They are not precise reproductions at all. It is as if Rubens was having another go towards
perfecting his compositions, while taking into account the format and the medium.
ANN V. GUNN (University of St Andrews): Paul Sandby and Reproductive Printmaking - An
Alternative Career?
Paul Sandby (1731-1809) is best known as a watercolour artist, but printmaking was a core
part of his artistic practice from the outset and throughout his career. His pioneering work with aquatint
was preceded by many years working with etching. He took a professional interest in the protection of
prints and printmakers, being one of eleven signatories to the 1777 amendment to the Copyright Act.
And he became one of the most reproduced landscape artists with the publication of such works as
Kearsley’s Virtuosi’s Museum.
While most of his print output was his own original work, he did also undertake the
reproduction of other artists’ work. This included: in the 1750s, views at Windsor after the drawings of
his brother Thomas Sandby and set designs for Jerusalem Delivered after John Collins; in the 1760s,
landscapes in America after Governor Pownall and others; and in the 1770s and 1780s, aquatints
after the work of William Pars, Pietro Fabris and David Allan.
This paper will consider Sandby’s reproductive prints in comparison to other printmakers
employed on the early projects, discuss his collaborations with Edward Rooker, and compare these
with the later aquatint projects in terms of technique, aesthetics and intention.
11.20 -12.35 PANEL 9: POLITICS AND PROPAGANDA
Chair: Chloe Gilling (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
RESEARCH FORUM
JOHN MOORE (Smith College, Northampton): Giuseppe Vasi’s Panorama of Rome and the Politics of
Topographical Printmaking
Through the ample lens of linear and aerial perspective, Giuseppe Vasi's Prospetto dell'alma
città di Roma constitutes an ambitiously scaled rendering of the most renowned set of seven hills the
world has known. A native of Corleone who lived and worked most of his life in the capital of the Papal
States, Vasi enjoyed many privileges as a Neapolitan subject and gratefully dedicated this etching to
Charles III, king of Spain, who from 1734 to 1759 had reigned as Carlo di Borbone, king of the Two
Sicilies. The panorama was first published in December 1765, although trial proofs pulled earlier had
been sent to Spain for examination and approval. The print was accompanied by an explanatory
booklet, the Indice del Prospetto di Roma, which could (and did) serve as an independent guidebook.
One particular turn of phrase therein caused Vasi to be called before the papal authorities.
Correspondence preserved in archival sources details both the nature of the disagreement and how it
was adjudicated and resolved. This exceptionally rich account throws surprising and revelatory light on
the relationship of prints to diplomatic protocol. I shall also briefly link the vicissitudes of Vasi's
publishing efforts to the insufficiently studied topic of book dedications in eighteenth-century Europe.
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MAŁGORZATA BIŁOZÓR-SALWA (Print Room, University of Warsaw Library): The Use of Printed
Maps in Political Propaganda - The Case Study of Jan Ziarnko’s Map of Paris (1616)
Throughout the 17th century printed images were important political tools. In my presentation I
would like to discuss the social use and impact of the propaganda prints. As elements of the
mechanism of ‘royal fabrication’ (Burke) they were frequently used according to the belief that faire
voir is faire croir. For my case study I have chosen to examine a little known Map of Paris (1616)
made by Jan Ziarnko. He created it as a sort of ‘reaction’ to the well know map previously made by
Mathaeus Merian (1615). As Merian’s map contained a portrait of Louis XIII, Ziarnko included in his
work an allegorical portrait of late Henri IV and the Marie de Medicis who was the regent at that time
(until now her image has not been recognized). This makes one believe that the Queen Mother used
Ziarnko’s map as a visual weapon in her struggle over power which he had with the young King. Due
to the political circumstances the engraving changed its function soon: it ceased to be a propaganda
tool and turned into a rare collectible object. However, it was re-used 30 years later as reworked
plates with all the political allegories replaced by a portrait of Louis XIV became a propaganda tool
again, which contrary to its first version became very well known. The case of Ziarnko’s Map proves
that printed maps should be treated as full-fledged propaganda images as important as e.g. historical
paintings. What is more, the ‘dialogue’ between Merian’s and Ziarnko’s works proves the complexity of
the way iconographical material was used and re-used.
JESSE FEIMAN (MIT, Cambridge, MA): The Empire Strikes Back: The Publication of Maximilian I’s
Woodcuts at the Twilight of the Holy Roman Empire
This paper addresses the intersection of politics, commerce and history in the late eighteenthcentury publication of woodcut suites originally commissioned by Maximilian I (1459-1519). Like their
sixteenth-century precursors, the new editions of Triumph of Maximilian (1796), Weisskunig (1799),
Triumphal Arch of Maximilian (1799), and Saints from the Family of Emperor Maximilian (1799)
advertised the lineage, achievements and ambitions of an ascendant Habsburg dynasty. At the time
the restrikes were printed, however, Maximilian’s heirs struggled to maintain their continental empire in
the face of Napoleon’s victorious armies.
I argue that the late editions relayed Maximilian’s vision of power to an international audience,
and used the lens of history to emphasize the dynasty’s pre-eminence to contemporary viewers. The
Habsburgs published the works with funds and materials supplied by the English publisher, James
Edwards (1757-1816), who sold the prints at his shop on Pall Mall. Explanatory introductions written
by the keeper of the
Habsburg print cabinet, Adam von Bartsch (1757-1821), emphasized the works’ significance to
Maximilian and to the history of German art. Additionally, Bartsch etched reproductions for some of the
missing or damaged blocks. These supplements will guide my interpretation of the eighteenth-century
production and reception of the Maximilian’s sixteenth-century woodcuts.
By focusing on restrikes, I aim to write a history that addresses the contributions of the artists,
craftsmen, merchants, and collectors responsible for creating and interpreting printed images. My
methodology blends the techniques and the archives of connoisseurship with the contextual and
thematic concerns of historiography.
12.35 – 13.30 Lunch (provided for speakers and chairs)
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13.30 – 14.45 PANEL 10: DEDICATION AND AUDIENCE
Chair: Scott Nethersole (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
KCLT
SHEILA MCTIGHE (The Courtauld Institute of Art): Jacques Callot, Francesco Villamena and
caricature in print, 1600-1620
What happened when caricature became a subject for prints, in the decades after its invention
as ephemeral portrait sketches by the Carracci in the early 1590s? This talk will look at the examples
of Jacques Callot’s Gobbi, a series of etchings designed in Florence ca. 1616 and published in Nancy
around 1622, and Francesco Villamena’s Ritratti in piedi, engravings published in Rome ca. 16001615. Callot included his self-portrait as a deformed dwarf in the Gobbi series, and now a new
identification can be made of another etched figure as a very prominent member of the Florentine
court. Disguised portraiture and caricature portraiture converge in these comic prints. Key to this
development were Villamena’s portrayals of itinerant tradesmen and mendicant clerics, which can now
be reclassified as a form of caricature when we examine their dedications in relation to their imagery.
GWENDOLINE DE MÛELENAERE (Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium): Displaying GiftGiving: Thesis Prints in the Spanish Netherlands
In the early modern period, public disputations granting an academic degree led to the publication of
broadsheets summarising the thesis conclusions. The positions were sometimes accompanied by
representations glorifying an ecclesiastical, academic or political well-known figure.
In the early 17th century, this new genre spread in Catholic countries and developed into largesized and abundantly illustrated documents. Thesis prints present a rich ornamental vocabulary,
typical for Baroque aesthetics, a complex page setting which associates word and image, and an
allegorical language offering plural possibilities of interpretation.
This paper proposes to focus on the circulation of thesis prints produced in the Southern Low
Countries, and how this influenced their iconography. The broadsides were not intended for the
traditional print market, but they were primarily designed and issued to be given to dedicatees, to
members of social and intellectual elites, and to relatives and friends (however, they could have been
later bought and collected for their artistic value). The act of gift-giving is expressed in the written
dedication to the protector going along the scientific conclusions. The donation can also be visually
staged through a mise en abyme, when the broadside depicts its own presentation to the student’s
sponsor. Such a device provides a confirmation to the entire community as to the nature of the
established (or wanted) relationship between giver and recipient. It is worthwhile to study these visual
and textual constructions, in order to understand the functioning and intentions of thesis engravings in
the socio-political context of courtly patronage at university and in Jesuit colleges.
CHRISTINA FAITH AUBE (Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles): Networking through Prints: Two
Etchings Dedicated to Michel de Marolles
Dedications on early modern prints, offered by a printmaker, publisher, or commissioner of a
work to honour a dedicatee, provide crucial insights into print production. These flowery textual
contributions necessitate, yet rarely receive, critical examination.
Much was at stake between dedicator and dedicatee, not the least of all the hope or promise of
favour, patronage, or financial reward. In this paper I examine two reproductive etchings after Italian
paintings, Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana and Domenichino’s Adoration of the Shepherds, both of
which bear revelatory dedications to the seventeenth century’s most celebrated print collector, the
French abbot, Michel de Marolles (1600–1681). During the very years in which Marolles amassed his
first collection, which would total 123,400 works in 1666, a German printmaker active in Rome,
Stephen Colbenschlag, and a French printmaker, Nicolas Cochin, produced prints dedicated to the
collector (the dedicator of Cochin’s work appears to have been the printmaker and print seller Jean
Rabasse). This was in itself rather unusual, as dedications frequently celebrated members of the royal
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family and high-ranking officials, not print enthusiasts. In inscribing their own names alongside this
influential figure in the Parisian printmaking world, their dedications broadcast association, whether
actual or desired. Through an analysis of the language employed by the dedicators, and of the types
of messages they conveyed in text and image about the dedicatee, I illustrate how a deeper
understanding of the context for and purpose of these prints can be gained through an examination of
their dedications.
13.30 – 14.45 PANEL 11: ORNAMENT
Chair: Bryony Bartlett-Rawlings (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
RESEARCH FORUM
OLIVER KIK (Université Catholique de Louvain): Marks of Art and Craftsmanship
It is a well-known and established fact that the origins of early print making bare a close
relationship with goldsmith workshops, with Albrecht Dürer as the most celebrated representative of
this development. Surprisingly, the printed output of these early engravers for goldsmith- and
architectural design is a field which gained little attention by print scholars so far. This paper examines
the professional position and production of this particular new genre of ornament prints from
goldsmith-engravers in the Low Countries such as the architect Alart DuHameel (c. 1460 – c. 1506) or
the anonymous Master W with the Key (active c. 1465-85). A major part of these engravers’ output
consisted of designs for metalwork such as reliquaries, censors, chalices or crosiers. By providing
designs for a wide range of craftsmen - ranging from architects, over wood carvers to goldsmiths – this
group of goldsmith-engravers can be interpreted as intermediate players in the dissemination of
geometrical designing knowledge to a great variety of media. This paper addresses issues such as the
dissemination of design skills, the practical and aesthetic function of design prints, the interdisciplinary
crossovers between craftsmen by printed media, and the self-representation of the artist by the use of
house marks and monograms.
MICHAEL J. WATERS (Worcester College, University of Oxford): The Issue of Genre in Early
Ornament and Architecture Prints
Since the genre of the ‘ornament print’ was established in the early-nineteenth century, it has
encompassed a broad range of largely non-figural work. This includes prints of everything from
candelabra, vases, trophies, vegetal scrolls, grotesques, and other ornamental motifs to highly
detailed architectural elements. While often preserved together, this vast array of printed material is
divided by questions of audience, purpose, and use. This is especially true of Renaissance prints of
column capitals, bases, and cornices, some examples of which reflect developments in contemporary
architectural practice and the study of antiquity, and have seemingly little in common with other types
of ornament prints.
Yet, as this paper posits, Renaissance architectural prints should not be understood as a
distinct genre. Rather, at their origins, they were part of a single visual dialogue that surrounded the
exploration of ornament that emerged from artist sketchbooks. Specifically, by examining two late
fifteenth-century albums of drawings—the so-called Mantegna Codex in Berlin and the Zichy Codex in
Budapest—as well as early sixteenth-century prints by Giovanni Antonio da Brescia, the Master of
1515, and a handful of German engravers, I argue that a diverse range of early ornament prints were
integrally linked in their conception, design, and dissemination. As these examples demonstrate,
printed architectural details and other types of ornament began as mutually informed hybrid
reinventions of antiquity that were produced for similar purposes by the same artists using common
motifs.
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CÈLINE VENTURA TEIXEIRA (Aix-Marseille Universitè): Spreading Ornaments through the Iberian
Peninsula : from Plantin to Pieter van Craesbeeck’s Print Workshops
The visual and print culture in the Iberian Peninsula during the early modern period seems to
be particularly productive and dynamic, thanks to the important role of Christophe Plantin and his
successors. In 1566, Plantin builds strong relationships with the Spanish humanist Arias Montano who
introduced him to the king of Spain Philipp II, after which he got hired to become the royal typographer
in 1578. In such an prestigious environment, a new market is thus available to Plantin : the kingdoms
of Spain and Portugal. This extension of Plantin’s activity sets up a real network in the Iberian
Peninsula thanks to Jean Moretus - his son-in-law - and his brother Pierre Moerentorf. Between 1570
and 1577, Moretus is particularly influent in this extension, as he collaborates with Portuguese
librarians like Jean de Molina and Pieter van Craesbeeck who sets up his print workshop in Lisbon.
Artists and craftsmen find in Floris brothers, Vredeman de Vries or Philippe Galle’s ornaments great
sources of inspiration. Decorative arts like ceramics and more particularly the azulejo prove the impact
of this diffusion involving to rethink issues related to the creative process. The reception of these
engraved reproductions implicates a new elaboration, a new adaptation peculiar to a culture and a
way of thinking.
14.55 – 16.10 PANEL 12: MARKET AND COMMERCE
Chair: Femke Speelberg (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
KCLT
MARJOLEIN LEESBERG (Compiler and editor of the New Hollstein-series): Changing views: The
Antwerp De Jode Dynasty of Publishers, c. 1550- c. 1675
The De Jode publishing firm was founded by Gerard de Jode (1517/18-1591) in Antwerp
around 1550. Following the death of his mother in 1601, Pieter de Jode I (1573-1634) took over the
firm, which was later continued by his son Pieter de Jode II (1606-after 1670/74). Compared with other
publishing dynasties, such as the Galle family, there is a significant difference in the continuation of
the firm’s approach to publishing across generations. Whereas the Galle firm (1570-1676) reissued
the same plates over three generations, from Philips Galle through Theodoor Galle to Johannes Galle,
each De Jode generation seems to have started a new stocklist of engravings. Pieter de Jode I
reissued hardly any plates from his father’s stock, which consisted of about 1200 plates with a main
focus on cartography, biblical history and ornament prints. Instead, he established a fund of about 400
plates, largely consisting of reproductive engravings after contemporary Italian and Flemish masters,
devotional imagery as well as an academic drawing book. Pieter de Jode II, for his part, cornered the
market of portraiture with hundreds of portrait prints.
This paper aims to address the underlying reasons for this remarkable discontinuity among the
De Jodes’ stocklists. It will be argued that the De Jodes, starting with Gerard de Jode, were
responsive to changing aesthetic views on the print market, influenced also by political, religious and
economic changes in the late 16th and early 17th century Netherlands.
REBECCA CARNEVALI (Centre for Renaissance Studies, Warwick University): Aldrovandi’s
Workshop: Print and Book Production in Post-Tridentine Bologna
My paper will consider the printing production of Bologna of the late sixteenth century as the
perfect context in which to study how contemporary challenges in the Italian book trade and the surge
of a market for printmaking mutually influenced each other.
Particularly, I will focus on the case-study of the so-called ‘workshop’ of Ulisse Aldrovandi
(1522-1605), that is the publishers and printmakers involved in his scientific editions, some of which
posthumous, and in the illustrations these included. This specific perspective will enable me to shed
more light on the exchanges between book and print production at a time when publishers of learned
books are first documented to diversify their production to include also popular cheap print, such as
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devotional images, and artistic prints. I will explain this diversification as the likely answer to the
challenges the Italian book market, especially the learned one, experienced from the 1570s onwards.
Second, I will also compare the lack of innovation in Aldrovandi’s scientific illustrations, with respect to
the techniques and style employed, to contemporary examples of treatises and printmaking, also by
artists connected to Aldrovandi’s publications later in the early seventeenth century. Lastly, I will touch
on the emergence of a shared urban audience for both prints and books thanks to the diffusion of the
mentioned cheap print.
To conclude, by using the case of Bolognese printing production of the late sixteenth century
my paper will ultimately prove the point of parallel investigations of printmaking and book illustration.
JAMES BAKER (University of Sussex): Selling Fun: On the Business of Satirical Prints in LateGeorgian London
Production, sale, and environment are crucial to understanding satirical prints published in
London circa 1780-1820. For people, businesses, materials, processes, and the necessity to sell all
shaped and constrained the satiric content these objects contained. This paper, based on a larger
research project, explores the marketplaces for cultural wares within which these satirical prints were
sold. A central concern is to establish these prints as objects sold as part of a portfolio of wares. In
doing so I attempt to reconcile the supposedly widespread and egalitarian phenomenon of print shop
window scenes, immortalised in James Gillray's 1808 VERY SLIPPY WEATHER, with the realities of
making and selling satirical prints. Gillray's vision of Hannah Humphrey's premises is a stereotype
whose relationship to contemporary reality is questionable, marginalising as it does the primary
function of shops as places of commerce. Nevertheless, this stereotype – however misleading - was
useful for shop owners. For if Humphrey's shop is not the model we should use to understand what a
late-Georgian satirical print shop was, it certainly was an emblem that made good business sense for
contemporaries to associate with from time to time. How and the extent to which this was done, I will
argue, was an individual choice, shaped by how proprietors saw their businesses within the
commercial and environmental contexts of their day and by the wares they chose to sell.
14.55 – 16.10 PANEL 13: WORD AND IMAGE
Chair: Tatiana Bissolati (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
RESEARCH FORUM
MAŁGORZATA ŁAZICKA (Print Room, University of Warsaw Library): Patriarchs, Jesters and
Dancing Couples. The Relationship between Word and Image in the 16th-century German Woodcuts
The first half of the 16th century in Germany saw significant changes in social, religious and
cultural life. These transformations were expressed visibly in graphic arts. Prints made in this period
by German artists were often combined with various texts: poems, pamphlets, treatises, etc. On the
one hand, the verses, placed in different parts of the composition, were added to the depicted scenes
and usually served as a commentary. On the other hand, in some cases, prints were created as an
illustration to the text.
The habit of combining an image with text was common in each kind of prints: religious,
political, satirical as well as genre scenes. Great examples of such fragments of literature are poems
written by Hans Sachs. His works were used in prints which depicted personifications, allegories,
biblical heroes, the customs of higher and lower social strata and unusual characters such as wild
men or jesters. The aforementioned texts cannot be regarded separately from works of graphic art
and, therefore, need to be taken into consideration while interpreting the latter.
In this paper, I will discuss the relationship between word and image on the basis of chosen
woodcuts made by Hans Schäufelein, Erhard Schön, Peter Flötner, Georg Pencz as well as Barthel
and Sebald Beham. Such an approach allows us to understand these prints better in their historical,
social and cultural context and, therefore, gives rise to new possibilities of interpretation.
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ALEXANDRA KOCSIS (University of Kent): The Image(s) of the Learned Painter in Sixteenth-Century
Reproductive Prints: Frans Floris and the Prints Published by Hieronymus Cock
The indication of the inventor has usually been regarded as an important theoretical framework
for disseminating artistic inventions in reproductive prints. However, the reference to the original artist
was not the only paratext added to the images reproduced. Longer verses elucidating and explaining
the topic of the depiction developed into an essential part of sixteenth-century prints. The role of these
narrative captions in contributing to the fame of the artist is often overlooked. Focusing on the prints
published after the works of the Antwerp painter, Frans Floris, in the 1550s-1560s, this paper will
address the role of the explanatory inscriptions in propagating art theoretical ideas.
The analysis will touch upon dedicatory and interpretative verses composed for the printed
images by Dominicus Lampsonius, as well as quotations from classical or contemporary literary
sources incorporated in the prints. In my opinion, the unity of text and image played a crucial role in
revealing the erudition of the original artist by providing the viewer-reader with a multilayered meaning
of the image and also by displaying the poetic sources of the painter. This paper is intended to show
how the prints contributed to Floris’ reputation as an erudite humanist painter, and how they
communicated the image of Floris as a pictor doctus even before this idea was explicitly stressed in
theoretical sources north of the Alps (for example in Lampsonius’ biography on Lambert Lombard).
TOMMASO GORLA (École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris): Printed
Mnemotechniques of the New World: Diego Valadés' Rhetorica Christiana
In the period that followed the conquest of New Spain, in the wake of what historian Serge
Gruzinski called the “colonization de l'imaginaire”, the conquerors'efforts had to face a complex system
of knowledge, power and beliefs that was embedded in every aspect of indigenous daily life, often
escaping control and censorship. It was soon realised that an effective way to grasp and affect this
complex web of relationships would be the search for a common ground on which to carry out the
implementation of the new doctrine. Since pictography seemed to be the most tangible means used by
the natives for the transmission of knowledge, some thought the war had then to be fought at the level
of images as well. The printed image soon became considered as an effective means to support the
Christian propaganda in the New World.
An example is Diego Valadés’ Rhetorica Christiana, published in the Italian town of Perugia in
1579.The book, equipped with 27 etchings, was conceived in order to provide the American
missionaries with a vademecum for an effective evangelisation, but beyond being a powerful
apparatus of rhetoric, the Rhetorica was also intended as an actual art-of-memory object. In fact,
many of the etchings that form the work should not to be considered as mere illustrations, but can be
studied as pure mnemotechnical pictures, where a carefully constructed interrelation between image
and word was capable of both reminding the missionary of his own preaching as well as affecting a
culturally different audience, such as that of Central America.
16.10 – 16.40 Break
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16.40 – 17.55 PANEL 14: USE AND COLLECTING
Chair: Barbara Furlotti (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
KCLT
MAGDALENA HERMAN (University of Warsaw): “Liber Denotus Imaginum” and other Print Albums
from the Collection of Jan Ponętowski
In 1592 a Polish nobleman and a former student of the University of Cracow, Jan Ponętowski
(c. 1540 – 1598) donated his collection of books and prints to his Alma Mater. Very little is known
about his patterns of collecting, but it seems that he gathered the majority of precious objects when he
was an abbot in the Premonstratensian monastery in Hradisko near Olomouc (1577-1587). This paper
will focus on a part of his collection which consists of albums compiled by or for him during the second
half of the sixteenth century. The collection he assembled undoubtedly reflects his interests and taste
for engravings by Netherlandish and Italian artists.
Eleven albums with over one thousand prints are still to be found in the Graphic and
Cartographic Collection of the Jagiellonian Library. Almost all albums bear their original bindings with
the lavishly decorated superexlibrises. Moreover, the inventory of the donation written by Jan
Ponętowski himself is kept in the Archive of the Jagiellonian University, and provides us with further
insight into the logic that stood behind his collection.
Foregoing circumstances give us a rare opportunity to compare the undispersed albums with
archival records and to discuss their place among other objects from Ponętowski’s collection. This
paper will also investigate how titles of the prints albums correspond to their content. This research of
a formerly almost unknown collection will enable a further analysis of the early modern taste for
printed images in less studied regions.
JOYCE ZELEN (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam): Prints and Scissors
Pierre Jean Mariette (1694-1774) mentions in his 'Abecedario' a Monsieur Rivière Du Freny
(1648-1724) who owned a cabinet with many drawers and shelves, all of which were provided with a
description of their contents. There were drawers with feet, arms, hands, heads, noses, eyes, etc. Of
course, Du Freny did not keep real body parts in his cabinet, but fragments cut out of prints. These
clippings he used to create entertaining collages. For instance, Mariette describes a creation with a
drinking party for which parts from a print of the Last Supper were used. Unfortunately none of Du
Freny’s collages have survived.
While today the cutting up of renaissance prints may be regarded as a serious offence, Du
Freny certainly was not the only one in the early modern period who chopped up, now sometimes very
rare, prints. A large number of interesting examples of this cut-and-paste phenomenon has survived. A
special example is formed by Manuscript Add MS 30384 in the British Library, filled with the erotic
clippings of the Dutch author and collector Hadrian Beverland (1650-1716). These collages together
with other surviving clippings demonstrate that the cutting up of prints must have been a very common
practice in the past.
This paper aims at illustrating the diverse motivations for the cutting up of prints by their
owners in the early modern period, ranging from creative manifestations of ideas to devotional
motivations. It will also be argued that these clippings can offer close insight into the mind and
thoughts of certain collectors and print owners.
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DONATO ESPOSITO (Independent Scholar): Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) as a Print Collector
Eighteen-century London provided a lively and competitive atmosphere in which Reynolds was
able to distinguish himself as a foremost print collector. The pupil of Thomas Hudson - himself a
voracious graphic art collector - Reynolds returned from a sojourn in Italy in 1752 to launch his
successful artistic practice. His collecting began in earnest from 1760, when he moved into a large
home in Leicester Fields (later Leicester Square) where he remained for the rest of his life. There he
assembled a collection of some 10,000+ prints of an extraordinary kind, ranging from Andrea
Mantegna to Angelica Kauffmann. He owned a rare print after Botticelli in multiple impressions, and
Mantegna’s Battle of the Sea Gods printed in blue ink. The collection had unusually depth and range,
with many prints related to other portions of his art collection, for the same decorative scheme or else
work by different artists connected with the same location.
Reynolds promoted the keen study of past art through his annual lectures (Discourses) to the
students at the Royal Academy, which were published soon afterwards. His print collection functioned
as evidence of the intellectual claims he made upon art, and reveals much about the privileged
position he assumed.
16.40 – 17.55 PANEL 15: PRINTS AND BOOKS
Chair: Rachel Sloan (The Courtauld Gallery)
RESEARCH FORUM
EVELIEN DE WILDE (Groeningemuseum, Bruges): Interdisciplinary Relations between Engravings by
Three Bruges Masters and other Forms of Art in Light of an Exhibition on Librarian Colard Mansion
In 1476, the Bruges-based scribe, book printer and book dealer Colard Mansion published his
De la ruyne des noble hommes et femmes, a French translation of Boccaccio's Decamerone. This
publication survived in copies including engraved illustrations by the Master of the Boccaccioillustrations which are also preserved as individual art works. Mansion was one of the first innovative
librarians to experiment with engravings in early printed books. In 2018, Colard Mansion is the key
figure in an exhibition on book and print production in and around Bruges during the second half of the
fifteenth century. The exhibition is now in preparation by the Groeningemuseum and Public Library of
Bruges in collaboration with a scientific committee of experts in the fields of art history, book history
and social history. In preparation of this exhibition and its accompanying catalogue with scholarly
essays, research is being conducted on 15th century manuscripts, incunables and engravings and
their interdisciplinary relation to other works of art.
The speaker is one of the curators of this exhibition. Her research focuses on the stylistic relations
between different forms of art and the engravings of the Master of the Boccaccio-illustrations, Master
W with the Key, and Master FVB. This presentation explores the artistic background of the three
masters and presents their relations with different forms of art within the overall context of the
exhibition.
ALEXA A. GREIST (Independent scholar): Pictorial Instructions for Drawing: the Origins and
Intentions of ‘ libri da disegnare’ in Seventeenth-Century Italy
This paper explores the early history of Italian printed drawing books as a case study in the
didactic relationship between image and text. In the first two decades of the seventeenth century, a
new genre of prints began to appear at print sellers in Venice, Bologna, and Rome. Publisher
inventories referred to these etchings and engravings, sold in series, as libri da disegnare, and this
confirms their didactic purpose: to guide the user in how to draw the human figure. Notably, these
printed drawing books rarely feature text. Of the more than 20 projects published in Italy during the
seventeenth century, only four printed drawing books contain any text referring to the prints within. In
two cases, that of Odoardo Fialetti and of Giacomo Franco, texts that accompanied first editions were
quickly dropped in subsequent editions. Here, I first relate the development of the genre, highlighting
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the small number of projects that contained text, and I present for the first time an interesting, but
previously unpublished, example of a drawing book with some limited text published by the Franco
family in Venice. I then turn to suggest some reasons for the genre’s general reliance on images,
rather than words: arguments include a discussion of the potential audience, as well as the different
didactic approach taken by libri da disegnare by comparison to other printed model books and
instructional manuals of the same period.
MARIA AVXENTEVSKAYA (Freie Universität Berlin): Placing Prints in Stammbücher
By the term Stammbuch, German historiographical tradition mainly means album amicorum or
“memory book” − a genre that first became popular in the Protestant circles in the mid-sixteenth
century. Stammbuch documents offer rich evidence on theological, musical, literary, medical and
artisanal cultures of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, as well as the vitality of classical
scholarship in verbal and visual quotes. Stammbuch-related practices included an adhesion of
specially prepared miniature artistic prints onto paper pages, frequently alongside manu propria
inscriptions.
Most often such “paper technologies” represent printed and folded portraits with witty
explanatory verses, miniature views and maps of cities, and prints only partially attached to the page,
so that the figures may appear almost vertical, with an inscription hidden behind it to be discovered by
an ingenious reader. The genre of “Stammbuch prints” is also fascinating in terms of considering the
circulation of specimen of classical art in a popular form, as well as in terms of considering the
relationship between word and image in the social use of printed materials within such private selfbuilding “collections” of visuals. Travelling the Wanderstrassen across Europe, the Stammbuch prints
became the Bilderfahrzeuge for cultivating the collective perception of significant cultural details,
transmitting the new values of artistic appreciation across specific learned communities and several
national traditions in Germany, Sweden, Italy and the Netherlands. My paper will analyse the genre of
“Stammbuch prints” as an artistic phenomenon in the context of early-modern practices of networking.
18.00 – 18.15 CLOSING REMARKS
Organised by Naomi Lebens, Tatiana Bissolati, Bryony Bartlett-Rawlings and Chloe Gilling (The Courtauld
Institute of Art)
This event has been made possible thanks to the generous support of The Courtauld Institute of Art,
CHASE and private individuals.
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