In the 15th century, Italian printmaking was dominated by the northern cities: Florence, Venice, and Milan. Throughout the century, printmaking was mainly concerned with playing cards and book illustrations, with a few single prints appearing in the second half of the century. While in Germany and the Netherlands the art was completely dominated by devotional, religious subject matter, Italian printmaking covered a relatively broad range. The awakening Renaissance attitude made the artists much more receptive to purely aesthetic, decorative, sensuous experience. In addition to religious subject matter, Italian prints included mythology, pure ornamentation, and some of the finest early portrait engravings.
Giorgio Vasari, the chronicler of Renaissance artists, credited the Florentine goldsmith Maso Finiguerra with the invention of printed engraving, but present knowledge indicates that, at the same period in Germany and the Netherlands, printmaking was in a more advanced stage. Despite the fact that book printing was originally introduced from the northern countries into Italy, engraving remained a national, regional development, free of strong foreign influence until the beginning of the 16th century.
Two methods of engraving were practiced in Italy, the broad manner and the fine manner. The fine manner, associated with the Finiguerra school, is characterized by closely cut and extremely fine lines combined with cross-hatching intermingled at times with dots. The broad manner is less dense, and forms are modelled using diagonally cut parallel lines, interlaid at times with short cuts or dots. In shading, the spacing between the lines is wider than in the fine manner and there is no cross-hatching.
Finiguerra himself was not an important artist. His significance lies in his influence on Antonio Pollaiuolo, a Florentine painter, sculptor, and architect whose reputation as one of the most distinguished engravers of the 15th century is based on his one authenticated print, The Battle of the Nudes (c. 1470)—a powerful image, beautifully engraved in the broad manner.
Pollaiuolo, Antonio: Battle of the Naked MenBattle of the Naked Men (also called Battle of the Nudes), engraving by Antonio Pollaiuolo, c. 1470–90; in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. 38.4 × 58.9 cm.The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1917 (17.50.99), www. metmuseum.org
While Pollaiuolo worked in Florence, Andrea Mantegna, a great painter and certainly the most eminent Italian printmaker, lived and worked in Mantua. Mantegna produced approximately 20 plates (only seven of which are completely authenticated), all line engravings in the broad manner. A superb draftsman and a virtuoso engraver, Mantegna could achieve, in spite of the limitations of his method, an incredible range of colour in his prints, a quality lacking in the work of most of his followers.
In addition to the masters, talented engravers included Cristofano Robetta, a Florentine who made some rich, intricate engravings in the fine manner; and the Venetian Jacopo de’ Barbari, who travelled in Germany and whose refined engravings show the influence of Albrecht Dürer. Other countries The Netherlands and Burgundy
The first half of the 15th century in the Netherlands and Burgundy was dominated by woodcut book illustrations. Although no single prints of great importance were produced, beautiful books were published. Antwerp and Delft were the main printing centres.
Parallel with, if not even a little earlier than, the emergence of distinguished printmakers in mid-15th-century Germany, a group of great engravers emerged in the Netherlands and neighbouring Burgundy. Superb artists, they are identified only by the subject of their most characteristic work: the Master of the Death of Mary, Master of the Gardens of Love, and Master of the Mount of Calvary.
Toward the end of the century, the Netherlands produced a brilliant artist—rivalling Master E.S.—known as the Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet or Master of the Hausbuch, who worked between 1450 and 1470. He is known by this name because the finest collection of his extremely rare prints is in the Print Cabinet of the Rijksmuseum. His prints are painterly and almost expressionist in power. His role in the technical development of printmaking is also significant, as he was the first major artist to make drypoints. France
In France, book illustrations dominated printmaking throughout the century. Paris, the cultural centre, led in book publishing, although other prosperous cities, such as Lyon, produced many illustrated books. The publications printed by Dupré and Pierre Le Rouge are the glories of French medieval graphic art.
Strangely enough, there was little engraving of importance. Most of the French engravings of this period were either rather crude, provincial illustrations or playing cards. Printmaking in the 16th century Germany
Albrecht Dürer was the master of 16th-century German graphic arts. One of the towering figures in the history of printmaking, he was a complex, truly Renaissance man, interested in philosophy and science as well as art. He was one of the first to break the provincial isolation of Germany by traveling to Italy, where he learned from the Italians and in turn influenced them.
Dürer’s subject matter mirrors his thoroughly European intellectual orientation. His prints deal with religion, history, mythology, and folklore. He is also one of the first great portrait engravers.
Dürer was one of the supreme draftsmen of all time and an artist of enormous imagination and sensibility. As a technician he raised the art of engraving to a height it never reached again. As an experimenter, he produced, in addition to his engravings and woodcuts, etchings and drypoints. His best works are metal engravings, which he cut himself. His woodcuts are perfect reproductions of his superb drawings.
Rhinoceros woodcut by Albrecht Dürer, 1515; in the British Museum, London. 24.8 cm × 31.7 cm.The Print Collector/Heritage-Images/Imagestate
Hans Baldung, another great German printmaker and one of the most original artists of his time, worked with Dürer. In his images of witchcraft and magic, Baldung expressed the medieval mysticism that lingered in the German Renaissance. Besides his black and white work, he produced fine chiaroscuro woodcuts in which light and shadow are produced by using different woodblocks for different tones of the same colour.
The Crucifixion, chiaroscuro woodcut in black and brown by Hans Baldung, 1514; in the Rosenwald Collection, National Gallery Art, Washington, D.C. 37.4 × 26.2 cm.Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Rosenwald Collection, 1943.3.901
Lucas Cranach the Elder was a typical representative of the German Renaissance—much less affected by the Italian Renaissance influence than Dürer. He had a vivid imagination and an earthy imagery that was full of vitality. He made many woodcuts and relatively few metal engravings.
Albrecht Altdorfer was one of the first great landscape artists and one of the first to make landscape etching and woodcuts for their own sake, rather than as backgrounds for figures. Under his influence, two other artists made fine landscape prints: Augustin Hirschvogel and Hanns Lautensack. The spontaneity and directness of their work foreshadows the lyrical landscapes of the 18th century.
The 16th century also included the artists who were referred to as Kleinmeister (“Little Masters”), so called because of the size of their prints, not their stature as artists. They were Barthel Beham, Hans Beham, Georg Pencz, and Heinrich Aldegrever. Other countries The Netherlands and Flanders