Grand Scale

Monumental Prints in the Age of Durer and Titian

Wyckoff Elizabeth, Silver Larry, Boorsch Suzanne, Armstrong Lilian, Stewart Alison, Goddard Stephen

"Grand Scale" brings to light rare surviving examples of mural-size prints – a Renaissance art form nearly lost from historical record. The most famous sixteenth-century woodcuts, engravings, and etchings were those done on an intimate scale. Yet artists also worked in an entirely different category of print production, producing mural-size prints that sometimes reached as high as ten feet. This handsome book, which features nearly fifty examples from Italy, Germany, France and the Netherlands, explores these multi-block woodcut and multi-plate engraving ensembles as vital contributions to the visual culture of their time. Comprising five essays, "Grand Scale" documents the relationship of monumental prints to the history of prints in general and also to mapmaking, painting, and book illustration, while addressing image design and modular printing from multiple, repeating blocks.

About the Author

Larry Silver is Farquhar Professor of Art History at the University of Pennsylvania.

Elizabeth Wyckoff is Assistant Director and Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College.

Suzanne Boorsch is Robert L. Solley Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs, Yale University Art Gallery.

Lilian Armstrong is Professor of Art Emerita, Wellesley College.

Alison Stewart is Associate Professor of Art History, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Stephen Goddard is Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, Lawrence.

Reviews

"The catalogue creates and treats a category that has often been overlooked due to the rarity and unwieldiness of these awesome, erotic, almost always tour-de-force specimens of drawing, carving, and printing" – Evelyn Lincoln, "Renaissance Quarterly"

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