A New York Times Best Art Book of 2018 The art of the chiaroscuro woodcut is celebrated in this groundbreaking and generously illustrated book. Chiaroscuro woodcuts are among the most immediately appealing of all historic prints, displaying exquisite invention, refined draftsmanship, technical virtuosity, and sumptuous color. Printing two or more woodblocks inked in different tones to create an image, the chiaroscuro woodcut was the earliest, most successful foray into color printing in Europe. Following its invention in Germany, the technique was first adopted around 1516 in Italy where it flourished through the sixteenth century. This novel art form engaged the interests of the most celebrated artists of the Renaissance, including Titian, Raphael, Parmigianino, and Beccafumi, and underwent sophisticated developments in the hands of such master printmakers as Ugo da Carpi, Antonio da Trento, Niccolò Vicentino, and Andrea Andreani. Featuring more than 100 prints and related drawings, this book incorporates pioneering art historical research and scientific analysis to present a comprehensive study of the subject. Essays trace its creative origins and evolution, describing both materials and means of production. Brimming with full-color illustrations of rare and beautiful works, this book offers a fresh interpretation of these remarkable prints, which exemplify the rich imagery of the Italian Renaissance. Published in association with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Traces the genesis and dissemination of chiaroscuro woodcuts in 16th-century Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, with more than 130 examples including masterpieces by Cranach, Beccafumi, and Goltzius.

With a storied past and a strong imperial presence, the southern German city of Augsburg enjoyed a golden age in the late 15th and early 16th centuries - fostering artists such as Hans Burgkmair, Erhard Ratdolt, Daniel Hopfer, Jörg Breu and Hans Weiditz. Focusing on the drawings, prints and illustrated books Augsburg's artists created as well as the innovative printing techniques they used, this volume - the first of its kind in English - serves as an introduction to Augsburg, its artists and its cultural history, during this period.

The first comprehensive history of late medieval printmaking, which transformed image production and led to profound changes in Western culture

The beauty and range of the work of the sixteenth-century artist Parmigianino as painter, draughtsman, and printmaker make him one of the most remarkable figures of the Italian Renaissance. He was an artist who seemed to discover his style without any effort, and his art was universally recognized as being graceful, or full of grace. In his day, "grace" was understood to be a spiritual endowment, conferring qualities that could not be taught. It was one of the preconditions of natural genius, so highly valued among Renaissance artists. But nothing as effortlessly elegant as Parmigianino's drawings and paintings could have been achieved without effort. It is through a close study of the drawings, in particular, that one is able to discern the sources of Parmigianino's style and the creative struggles he endured. This illustrated study offers a comprehensive reassessment of his work as a draughtsman. More than eighty works on paper, selected from collections around the world, are discussed in detail. Among Renaissance artists, Parmigianino was perhaps more conscious than any of the potential of the graphic arts to convey, and indeed broadcast, complex ideas. He explored this potential himself, not only by means of his numerous drawings but also through the etchings he produced on his own (effectively introducing this print medium into Italian art) and through the engravings and chiaroscuro woodcuts that were made after his designs. In these media, his influence travelled farther and wider than it could have through his paintings alone. This book coinciding with the quincentenary of the artist's birth in Parma in 1503, accompanies an exhibition presented at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, from October 3, 2003 to January 4, 2004, and at The Frick Collection, New York, from January 27 to April 18, 2004.

In Printing Colour 1400–1700, Ad Stijnman and Elizabeth Savage offer the first handbook of early modern colour printmaking before 1700 (when most such histories begin), creating a new, interdisciplinary paradigm for the history of graphic art. It unveils a corpus of thousands of individual colour prints from across early modern Europe, proposing art historical, bibliographical, technical and scientific contexts for understanding them and their markets. The twenty-three contributions represent the state of research in this still-emerging field. From the first known attempts in the West until the invention of the approach we still use today (blue-red-yellow-black/‘key’, now CMYK), it demonstrates that colour prints were not rare outliers, but essential components of many early modern book, print and visual cultures.

Through an examination of material and institutional circumstances, through the study of work shop practices and of technical and aesthetic experimentation, this book seeks to give an account of the ways in which Renaissance prints were realized, distributed, acquired, and handled by their public.