The Early Modern Painter-Etcher

Edited by Michael Cole

Publish Date: 7/7/2006
Dimensions: 9 x 12
Page Count: 208 pages

Illustrations:

Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-271-02905-4

Hardcover Edition: $64.95Add to Cart

Winner of a 2007 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

“This catalogue represents a real contribution and original and convincing explanations for the reason to consider the work of painter/etchers as a category apart. . . . I believe that this will become a useful and well-used resource for print historians, and will be one of the museum catalogues that will become more than a souvenir of a fascinating exhibit.” —Evelyn Lincoln, Brown University

“The essays and descriptions of the numerous illustrations are well written and documented but not pendantic.” —R.K. Dickson, Bloomsbury Review

“With index and comprehensive bibliography, this lavishly illustrated catalog is essential for the historian of early modern European art.” —S.C. Scott, Choice

“The notes associated with each catalog image are detailed and enlightening and place the work in relation to other works. The many black-and-white illustrations are of good quality and etchers will particularly enjoy the illustrations that show the same plate in different states.” —Kellie Cannon, Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) Reviews

For half a century after its introduction in Europe, printmaking remained the province of a specially trained group of professionals. What changed this situation was the invention of etching, which allowed for print designs to be drawn directly onto a plate so that any competent draftsman could try his hand at it. Many artists did, and as a result, we now have a wide-ranging corpus of major Renaissance and Baroque graphics made by artists who, though famous in other fields, were novices in the print medium.

Featuring essays by Michael Cole, Larry Silver, Susan Dackerman, Graham Larkin, and exhibit co-curator Madeleine Viljoen, The Early Modern Painter-Etcher spans three centuries, roughly from the time of Dürer to that of Goya, and looks at works executed by some seventy painters for whom printmaking was primarily an experimental field. The book accompanies an exhibition that opened in April 2006 at the University of Pennsylvania and will travel to the Ringling Museum of Art and to the Smith College Museum of Art.

Michael Cole is Associate Professor of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Cellini and the Principles of Sculpture (2002) and the co-editor of Inventions of the Studio, Renaissance to Romanticism (2004).

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Michael Cole

1. Fluid Boundaries: Formations of the Painter-Etcher

Michael Cole and Larry Silver

2. Dürer’s Etchings: Printed Drawings?

Susan Dackerman

3. Drawing and Etching in Early Modern Europe

Madeleine Viljoen

4. The Unfinished Eighteenth Century