In early sixteenth-century Italy, works of art came to be understood as unique objects made by individuals of genius, giving rise to a new sense of the artist as the author of his images. At the same time, the practice of engraving, a medium that produced multiple printed images via collaborative processes, rapidly developed. In this book, Lisa Pon examines how images passed between artists and considers how printing techniques affected the authorship of images. Pon focuses on the encounters between the engraver Marcantonio Raimondi and three key artists: Albrecht Dürer, Raphael, and Giorgio Vasari. She reevaluates their work in light of the tensions between possessive authorship and practical collaboration in the visual arts.

An in-depth collection of essays on the leading engraver and printmaker of the Italian Renaissance, accompanying the first major exhibition of his work in over three decades, at the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester.

Making Copies in European Art 1400-1600 comprises sixteen essays that explore the form and function, manner and meaning of copies after Renaissance works of art. The authors construe copying as a method of exchange based in the theory and practice of imitation, and they investigate the artistic techniques that enabled and facilitated the production of copies. They also ask what patrons and collectors wanted from a copy, which characteristics of an artwork were considered copyable, and where and how copies were stored, studied, displayed, and circulated. Making Copies in European Art, in addition to studying many unfamiliar pictures, incorporates previously unpublished documentary materials.

What can and can't be copied is a matter of law, but also of aesthetics, culture, and economics. The act of copying, and the creation and transaction of rights relating to it, evokes fundamental notions of communication and censorship, of authorship and ownership - of privilege and property. This volume conceives a new history of copyright law that has its roots in a wide range of norms and practices. The essays reach back to the very material world of craftsmanship and mechanical inventions of Renaissance Italy where, in 1469, the German master printer Johannes of Speyer obtained a five-year exclusive privilege to print in Venice and its dominions. Along the intellectual journey that follows, we encounter John Milton who, in his 1644 Areopagitica speech 'For the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing', accuses the English parliament of having been deceived by the 'fraud of some old patentees and monopolizers in the trade of bookselling' (i.e. the London Stationers' Company). Later revisionary essays investigate the regulation of the printing press in the North American colonies as a provincial and somewhat crude version of European precedents, and how, in the revolutionary France of 1789, the subtle balance that the royal decrees had established between the interests of the author, the bookseller, and the public, was shattered by the abolition of the privilege system. Contributions also address the specific evolution of rights associated with the visual and performing arts. These essays provide essential reading for anybody interested in copyright, intellectual history and current public policy choices in intellectual property. The volume is a companion to the digital archive Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC): www.copyrighthistory.org.

More versatile and less idiosyncratic than Michelangelo, more prolific and accessible than his mentor Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, though he died at only thirty-seven, is considered the single most influential artist of the Renaissance. Here, art historian Paul Joannides explores the different social and regional contexts of Raphaels work and discusses all aspects of his artistic output. He traces Raphaels career from his origins in Urbino, through his altarpieces made in Umbria in the shadow of Perugino, to the first flowering of his genius in Florence where he painted a series of iconic Madonnas that are among the most beloved images in Western art. Raphaels employment by the dynamic and demanding Pope Julius II gave him opportunities without parallel and encouraged the full expansion of his genius. As a sophisticate entrepreneur, he dominated Romes artistic life and extended the range of his activities to that of architect, designer, pioneer archaeologist and theoretician. The foundation of Raphaels versatility and range was his supreme clarity of mind as a draughtsman. Knowledge of his drawings, on which Joannides is a leading expert, is central to understanding of his achievement, and they are thoroughly explored here.

In this first in-depth study dedicated to the intriguing history of the translation of statues and reliefs into print, the essays in this volume reflect the printmakers’ various approaches and challenges of translating antique or contemporary artworks, underlining their highly creative handling.

A comprehensive re-assessment of Raphael's artistic achievement and the ways in which it transformed the idea of what art is.