This exhibition is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see around 100 exceptional drawings created using the exquisite metalpoint technique. It features works by some of the greatest artists working from the late 14th century to the present including Rogier van der Weyden, Petrus Christus, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein the Elder, Lucas van Leyden, Rembrandt, Edward Burne-Jones, William Holman Hunt, Otto Dix, Jasper Johns and Bruce Nauman. Works drawn from the British Museum's superb collection of metalpoint drawings sit alongside major loans from European and American museums as well as private collections, including four sheets by Leonardo da Vinci from the Royal Collection.--British Museum website.
This richly illustrated publication reproduces and describes effectively every early modern German color print held at the British Museum. It is one of the world's most significant collections of these rare milestones of cultural heritage and technology. New photography reveals 150 impressions in jaw-dropping detail, most life-size. Some have never been seen in public or reproduced. It is the first major study of the first wave of German color printing. It spans medieval printing in the late 1400s through the Renaissance and Reformation of the 1500s. Early Colour Printing features masterpieces by leading figures like Erhard Ratdolt, Lucas Cranach, Hans Baldung Grien, and Hans Burgkmair, as well as unfairly overlooked entrepreneurs and innovators like Erasmus Loy (and his daughter Anna). Their breakthroughs reproduced artworks and simplified astronomical calculations. They created trends in interior design and signalled 'red-letter days'. They helped musicians sight-read and they color-coded metals for goldsmiths. These diverse new functions and markets might seem unrelated. But they are connected, and they cannot be understood in isolation. From artworks to missals, icons to wallpapers, this book breaks new ground by revealing the fascinating underlying technologies that enabled the production of these color-printed objects. The many inventions of color printing in the German-speaking lands began with medieval novel solutions. They were devised long before color printing inks could be formulated. Then, color printing techniques transformed how printed material could be used during the technological and cultural revolutions of the sixteenth century. Later designers and artists around Europe celebrated these techniques' heritage for centuries, from the 'D rer Renaissance' until chromolithography revolutionized the print market in the nineteenth century. Early Colour Printing captures this story in rich detail. It sets the stage for second wave of German color woodcut, which was triggered by the Expressionist revival at the turn of the twentieth century. Thoroughly researched and engagingly written, this collection guide will be a standard reference on German graphic art, early modern visual culture, and the history of printing itself. Early Colour Printing: German Renaissance Woodcuts at the British Museum offers significant new research, including previously unidentified examples of early modern color-printing. Some are believed to be unique in the world; others were made decades before the landmark invention of colorful chiaroscuro woodcut in Italy in 1516. By modeling a printer- and technology-based approach to the history of printing, it contributes to scholarship by pinpointing attributions to printers--not just to artists or designers. In doing so, it lays the groundwork for a new understanding of the history of print, one that encompasses all forms of printed material. This publication derives from an exhibition at the British Museum curated by Elizabeth Savage.
This volume presents the results of a comprehensive non-invasive technical examination of 30 northern European metalpoint drawings in the collection of the British Museum, most of which were included in the exhibition Drawing in Silver and Gold: Leonardo to Jasper Johns, shown at the British Museum, London and the National Gallery of Art, Washington in 2015.Metalpoint is a drawing technique closely associated with the linear aesthetic of the 15th century, but its unique qualities were still being explored by artists such as Hendrick Goltzius throughout the following century. Using an approach developed for previous research on Italian Renaissance drawings, the authors of this study combined visual examination methods with technical imaging and chemical analysis in order to uncover new information on the materials used by different artists and explore the variations in their drawing techniques. The resulting data is used to make comparisons and associations between various works and also shows how northern European artists, particularly those from the Netherlands, differed profoundly from their counterparts south of the Alps in the innovative way they used incised lines to emphasise certain details in their drawing.The detailed discussion and documentation presented in this study complements an earlier volume on Italian Renaissance drawings and will be of great interest to anyone engaged in studying or caring for old master drawings.
During his forty-year career at the British Museum, he built a world reputation as a pioneering scholar and interpreter of Eastern art, one of the first to challenge the West's myopic assumption that it held a monopoly on beauty and truth.
Antiquæ Libri - The Archaeology of the Book - ATB-1305In this volume Peddie gives a brief account of sources of information on many aspects of fifteenth century books. For such a brief book Peddie provides sources on topics ranging from block prints, woodcuts, engravings, book illustration, maps, initials, printers' marks, colophons, title pages, signatures, water marks, facsimiles, Greek printing, Hebrew printing and music printing. He also outlines bibliographies of national catalogues and general works.
