old master print
(noun)
A print produced within the Western tradition, usually applied to prints made before 1830.
Examples of old master print in the following topics:
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Hatching and Cross-Hatching
- It is especially evident in many of the old master prints dating from the fifteenth century.
- Albrecht Dürer is a particular example of an artist who perfected the technique, employing it in much of his drawn and printed work .
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Drypoint
- Because the technique of using the needle is close to using a pencil, drypoint is easier to master for students trained in drawing than the method of engraving, which requires a special tool called a burin.
- Dentistry tools, nails, and metal files can all be used to produce drypoint prints.
- A line with no burr at all creates a very fine line in the final print, since it holds very little ink.
- The technique appears to have been invented by the Housebook Master, a south German 15th-century artist, all of whose prints are in drypoint only.
- Among the most famous artists of the old master print was Albrecht Dürer, who produced 3 drypoints before abandoning the technique.
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Graphic Arts
- By the end of the century, printed books with illustrations, still mostly on religious subjects, were rapidly becoming accessible to the prosperous middle class, as were engravings of fairly high quality by printmakers like Israhel van Meckenem and Master E.
- In the fifteenth century, the introduction of cheap prints, mostly in woodcut, made it possible even for peasants to have devotional images at home.
- Israhel van Meckenem and his wife, the first self-portrait in a print.
- Israhel van Meckenem was the most prolific engraver of the fifteenth century and an important figure in the early history of old master prints.
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Antwerp: A Center of the Northern Renaissance
- The Antwerp School comprised many generations of artists and is known for portraiture, animal paintings, still lifes, and prints.
- Although attempts have been made to identify individual artists, most paintings remain attributed to anonymous masters.
- The city was an internationally significant publishing center, with prodigious production of old master prints and book illustrations.
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Identification and Art
- Mâle's l'Art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France (originally 1899, with revised editions; translated into English as The Gothic Image, Religious Art in France) of the Thirteenth Century has remained continuously in print.
- A number of collections of different types have been classified using Iconclass, notably many types of old master print, the German Marburger Index, and the collections of the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.
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Etching
- Along with engraving, etching is one of the most important methods of printmaking in the tradition of the old master prints, and is still in wide use today.
- The design is drawn in reverse to account for the mirror-image made in printing.
- The paper picks up the ink from the etched lines to make the print.
- The 17th century was the great age of etching, with Rembrandt, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione and many other masters.
- Most of Callot's prints were relatively small, but packed with detail.
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Block Books
- Block books were typically printed as folios, with two pages printed on one full sheet of paper, which was then folded once for binding.
- A Biblia Pauperum included visual depictions that related the Old Testament to the New Testament, often placing the illustrations in the center with very little additional text.
- Each group of images is dedicated to one event from the Gospels, which is accompanied by two slightly smaller pictures of Old Testament events that prefigure the central one, according to belief of medieval theologians.
- Whereas most polychromatic prints required a separate printing surface for each color used, polychromatic block books were colored by hand.
- Three episodes from the block book Biblia Pauperum illustrating typological correspondences between the Old and New Testaments: Eve and the serpent, the Annunciation, and Gideon's miracle.
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Single Sheets
- Woodcut, or woodblock printing, had reached Europe from the Byzantine or Egyptian world by around 1300, and was used largely to print patterns on textiles.
- By the time paper was first being manufactured in Burgundy and Germany at the end of the 14th century, woodblock-printed cards and religious images were beginning to be seen.
- Another notable German printmaker is known as the "Housebook Master. " His prints were made in drypoint: he scratched his lines on the plate leaving them much more shallow than they would be with an engraving.
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Engraving
- Other terms often used for printed engravings are copper engraving, copper-plate engraving or line engraving.
- At this time the technique lost popularity, except for its use in banknotes and other forms of security printing.
- The process can be repeated many times; typically several hundred impressions (copies) can be printed before the printing plate shows much sign of wear.
- Copying of prints was already a large and accepted part of the printmaking culture but no prints were copied as frequently as Dürer's .
- After 1550, engraving fell out of popularity in favor of etching, which is more easily mastered for artists trained in drawing.
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Manuscript Printing
- Block printing was long practiced in Christian Europe as a method for printing on cloth, achieving widespread use by the year 1300.
- Images printed on cloth for religious purposes could be quite large and elaborate, and when paper became relatively easily available, around 1400, the medium transferred very quickly to small woodcut religious images and playing cards printed on paper.
- These prints were produced in very large numbers from about 1425 onward.
- Around mid-century, block-books-- woodcut books with both text and images, usually carved in the same block-- emerged as a cheaper alternative to manuscripts and books printed with movable type.
- Before the painting was generally attributed to Quarton, some art historians thought the painting might be by a Catalan or Portuguese master.