The Renaissance Print: 1470-1550

The illustrative print, and its ability, to be multiply reproduced, has long been regarded as extremely important to the history of art, yet there has been no work published on the subject for 80 years. This book covers the critical years of the development of the art of print-making between about 1470 and 1550 in both southern and northern Europe. The authors examine the topic from a variety of different angles, considering for instance the practicalities behind the production of prints, and the ways in which changes to technical methods affected the making of prints. They look at how prints were distributed to a wider audience than that available to more traditional works of art, and how this affected the content of the prints themselves. The resulting book gives a clear overview of how Renaissance prints of various sorts were made, distributed, acquired and finally used by the public, at a time when printmaking came to be adopted by well-known masters of the art.