Landau and Parshall 1994

Landau, David and Peter Parshall. The Renaissance Print: 1470-1550. New Haven: Yale, 1994.

"To what extent did the print revolutionize the transfer of knowledge in the early modern world?" (V)

"Though the study is laden with references to the history of the book and to book illustration, in general we have not entered directly into this crucial aspect of early printmaking as a problem in itself on the grounds that it properly merits separate treatment." (Vi)

Framing the Renaissance Print

Woodblock printing on paper by end of 14c in Europe (earlier, woodblocks used on textiles)-- intaglio "undertaken in a serious way during the 1430s somewhere along th eUpper Rhine region of southwestern Germany," adapting techniques from gold/metalsmithing (1)

PAPER! "The one pratical ingredient required by all printmakers was a supply of paper in sufficient quantity to make printing worthwhile. The nature and availability of paper was indeed the critical factor in bringing about the success of the new medium." (1-2)

First woodcuts: inexpensive devotional images, "designed, cut, and printed in small monastic workshops or by independent craftsmen, including playing-card makers" (2) -- sometimes termed "saint makers" or "Jesus makers" in archival records

Convents -- "we have an inventory of a convent in the Flemish town of Mechelen in the 1460s which housed some sort of press along with a set of woodblocks for printing images." (2) --> note about this

Woodcut quickly tied to book printing in second half of 15c -- easiest way to illustrate text printed with movable type -- helped develop a market outside of that for devotional imagery -- "In many respects the early woodcut had a history very much its own, more closely connected to the activities of illuminators and other bookmen than to intaglio printing. Given the differences in origin, in working procedure, and in milieu, it was only around 1500 that the woodcut began to realize an important kinship with the engraved print." (3)

Intaglio printing seems to have arisen in same area where Gutenberg introduced movable type; this is "tantalizing and suggestive" -- was their a common etiology for invention of printing and moveable type? -- yet very different processes, useing different presses

Earliest italian engravings used technique (niello) different from that in Mainz

Early engravings more wideranging in subject than just devotional prints of woodcuts; "These non-religious preoccupations find their closest parallel in decorated metalwork, tapestry, and other luxury items such as carved ivory mirrors and jewelry boxes." -- some assume, then, a wealthier clientele, but not clear; artisans also needed figural models, etc.

Master of the Playing Cards -- engravings from 1430

Around 1470s, character of printmaking began to change; rise of "peintre-graveurs", name Adam Bartsch gave for masters who were painters who saw printmaking as extension of painter's art

Housebook Master; drypoints that could only print maybe a dozen, not made for mass market

Israhel van Meckenem, first printmaker to sign his work

"The luxury printed book was caught in a commercial and aesthetic struggle with the illuminated manuscript, a struggle that the former was destined to win for obvious practical reasons. But the period of competition led to experiments in which each mode of production adopted certain techniques and formal tendencies of the other. This development was critical for the evolution of the woodcut medium in that it eventually led to the rise of block cutters skilled in translating increasingly more intricate designs into relief for the type press. The consequent migration of woodcut-making from monastic contexts and the pedestrian workshops of cardmakers to the more demanding ateliers of bookprinters both secularized and professionalized the skill. Woodcut design and block cutting became sought-after and highly valued specializations in the last quarter of the fifteenth century." (5)

Examples of prints beginning to be collected in incunable period: print album of Jacopo Rubieri da Parma, Album of Jakub Beg in Istanbul containing 15c Italian engravings along with many other images of Turkish, Persian, and Chinese origin, harmann Schedel of Nuremberg's humanist library which "harbored large numbers of engravings and woodcuts pasted into his printed books and manuscripts" (5)

Peintre-graveurs flourished only for a few generations; "once printers were confronted with the obvious commercial opportunities presented by thep rint, the inventor became less important than the execution. This we can see anticipated by the emergence of the professional woodblock cutters in the 16c, among them many enterprising craftsmen who became small-time printers on their own, printers who ultimately pioneered the way to the large-scale publishing houses of mid-century" (6)

Craft Guilds, Workshops, and Supplies

Visual arts lumped together in guilds, but "Prints were especially inclined to elude conventional definition within he crafts. The planing and finishing of woodblocks and the cutting of their designs required the tools of the cabinetmaker and the sculptor. However, these tools were being used in order to make images on paper, typically a matter for the illuminators. An engraver, on the other hand, employed the tools and the materials of a metalsmith, but once again to different ends. Furthermore, the print meant relatively large-scale production slated for an open market rather than working under commission, and this sometimes involved another guild with priority in governing the trade in small objects." (7)

Composing a print not much different than painter's art, drafting; cutting it closer to metalworker -- early on, no exclusive guild for printmakers

Crafts related by tool and material -- ex. of carpenter Flotner who published his designs in woodcut prints

"Free arts" in Nuremberg: not bound by rules of guild or town councils; woodblock cutters and designers fall under this rubric, would be commissioned by printers for designs

"A survey of those towns spawning lively communities of printmakers reveals one significant attribute all of them held in common: the presence of an important book printing industry. Antwerp, Strasbourg, Basel, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Florence, and Venice were all major forces in printing through the early decades of the 16c." (10)

Book printing sometimes a "free art" but prints might voluntarily join a merchants guild; others operated outside the guilds

"As printing supplanted scriptoria, many illuminators, draftsmen, calligraphers, and others went with the independent printers, resulting in a decline in guild membership and finances." (11) -- resulting trend toward civic control of printing in response

"Unlike painters' workshops that were only partly engaged in printmaking, the book publishers frequently operated on a very large scale, were heavily staffed, and depended upon considerable sums of capital investment. Publishers therefore often surfaced among the entrepreneurial elite close to the centers of economic and political power. Several factors encouraged the larger publishers towards monopoly. It was once assumed that no exclusive and officially chartered corporation of printers came into being in Europe prior to the Venetian giuld stet up in 1548, followed by the London Company of Stationers in 1557. However, it appears that informal conclaves,and certain close business dealings among publishers, had been the practice long before." -- in Lyons, small number of powerful investors without printing houses "underwrote publications which they farmed out to various presses. Printers' guilds eventually were formed in order to resist the control exercised by this kind of financial oligarchy." (11)

Itineracy among printers and printmakers; family workshops, especially among cardmakers; "Women also played a role in printmaking workshops, most often as illuminators who hand-colored prints, but occasionally also as woodblock cutters." (11)

"In a testament from January 1531, 'Katherina Hetwigin formschneiderin' of Nuremberg lists her meager belongings, and notes that she is owed seven gulden for a cut woodblock in the possession of Pfaltzgraf Friederich in the Neuenmarckt. Johann Neudorfer remarks in his chronicle of 1547 that George Glockendon's daughters worked alongside him at his Nuremberg corner press. What evidence there is suggests that women labored primarily in subordinate roles, though it is surely significant that in Antwerp and Brussels, in the Netherlands, and very likely elsewhere, they were being admitted to the guilds."" (12)

"The increasingly indirect relation of maker to purchaser entailed in printmaking meant that speculation and experimentation became guiding principles within the aesthetic and iconographic preferences of the medium. Printers were quintessentially an open market commodity, and being relatively inexpensive to produce and distribute, they were supple in their ability to respond to the interests of their audience." (12)

Best archive of Renaissance printmaker's workshop comes from posthumous inventory of Francesco Rosselli (called Matassa), a Florentine merchant who died intestate in 1525; owned a substantial atelier for the printing and selling of maps, woodcuts, and engravings -- maybe not printing them himself, but acquiring them from printmakers; "the 1527 inventory is predominantly the recrod fo a printmakers workshop as it was in the first decade of the century, if not earlier" -- bc he inherited it from his father (13)

Major inventory of Cornelis Bos, printmaker in Antwerp; accused of heresy, he fled, and his household goods were confiscated, inventored, and sold in 1544-1545

Paper: made in large quantities in Italy and France already by 14c

Note 64: "Eva Ziesche and Dierk Schnitger, 'Elektronenradiographische Untersuchungen der Wasserzeichen des Mainzer Catholicon von 1460,' Archiv fur Geschichte des Buchwesens 21 (1980), cols. 1303-60, studies the paper stocks used for printing this incunabulum by photographing and comparing the sieves and their watermarks, identifying specific molds and pairs of molds, and thereby constructing a chronology for the use of paper in the printing. Such an investigation could be usefully applied to something like the 1511 edition of Albrecht Durer's three Large Books."

Watermark could indicate paper's quality or size, not necessarily source

Watermark paired with countermark enables more precision

"A careful look at the evidence makes clear that we know far less about printin gpresses in this period than the literature often assumes. Most scholarsly have simply imagined the regular availability of woodblock presses from the time of Gutenberg on and of roller presses from at least the latter part of the fifteenth century. Though this presumption is reasonable for woodblock presses, it is much less certain for intaglio presses." (28)

Portable presses: "Emperor Maximilian retained a portable type press for publishing his various pronouncements on his travels." (29)

Presses would be handmade and custom built by carpenters and screwmakers; could be made cheaper and smaller for printmakers, bigger and more sturdy with an iron screw for active presses -- "Perhaps there were tabletop models as simple as a bookbinder's press, or for that matter something like the average linen press employed in any well-outfitted middle-class household."

Borders around woodcuts and flights of birds serve to balance the block; "Lucas Cranach actually placed triads of dots at strategic points in the blank areas of his compositions for this purpose. Failing such precautions, the dampened paper would often sag into the irregularly chiseled depressions on the block and become badly smudged with ink." (29)

"Where we find blinding printing [blind impressions] it is good evidence that a powerfully constructed press was in use." (29)

Intaglio impressions in 15c maybe taken from hand-rolling a large drum over the sheet -- see Bos's inventory; first secure reference to a roller press is in the inventory of a Flemish book printer and dealer's shpo in Mechelen in 1540 (30)

Abraham Bosse's 17c treatise on engraving gives first description of how a roller press was built

Probably easy to append printmaking operation to a painters shop, but little evidence of contracts showing rates of production

A good engraving, even a small one, probably took at least a week of work; an etching, maybe a day

200 good impressions from a plate, maybe; plate exhausted after 3000