The December 2021 issue of Print Quarterly (Volume XXXVIII, No. 4) has been published and it contains four reviews and a note that may be of interest to CODART members.
David S. Areford reviews Kathryn M. Rudy’s ‘daring’ new work, Image, Knife, and Gluepot: Early Assemblage in Manuscript and Print, which explores two Middle Dutch books of hours – both hybrid works which had manuscript texts but mainly printed images. According to Areford, Rudy has many interesting things to say about both printmakers and viewer reception in this period. Her book is written in first person, which is uncommon for a scholarly text, but remains transparant about her methods of research at all times.
Daantje Meuwissen’s looks at Yvonne Bleyerveld’s The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700: Jacob Cornelisz. She analyses how Bleyerveld has successfully synthesised the existing literature on Cornelisz. (ca. 1460-1533), and has reconstructed his fragmented oeuvre.
Nadine M. Orenstein reviews Maarten Bassens’ and Joris van Grieken’s Bruegel: The Complete Graphic Works. The book was produced in conjunction with the exhibition, The World of Bruegel in Black and White held at the Royal Library in Brussels on the 450th anniversary of Bruegel’s (ca. 1526-1569) death. Orenstein specifically mentions the essay concerning Breugel’s collaborations with Hieronymus Cock (1518-1570); a study of the partially carved woodblock The Dirty Bride (ca. 1566); and finally, a thematically organized catalogue of Bruegel’s prints.
In the last review Hans Jakob Meier’s looks at Ad Stijnman’s The New Hollstein volume on Jakob Christof Le Blon (1667-1741). The significance of Le Blon’s invention of trichromatic printing and the lack of a complete catalogue of the artist’s oeuvre is emphasized by Meier. He also mentions the inclusion of catalogues of the prints of Jan and Jacob l’Admiral (1699-1771 and 1700-1770), Le Blon’s first pupils.
The issue also contains a note on Gitta Bertram’s dissertation publication, Peter Paul Rubens as Designer of Title Pages: Title Page Production and Design in the Seventeenth Century, which analyzes Rubens’s (1577-1640) contribution to the art of title page design in the context of book production. Bertram contends that Rubens’s designs for title pages should be placed on an equal footing to his paintings, arguing for the high social standing of books and private libraries in the seventeenth century, and hence for the importance of these designs to Rubens’s oeuvre.
Contents
Memoirs of the Print Trade, introduction by Antony Griffiths and contributions by Gordon Cooke, Alan Cristea, Adrian Eeles, D. Lesley Hill and Alan N. Stone, Armin Kunz, Christopher Mendez, Frederick Mulder, Hubert Prouté, Mary Ryan and David Tunick.
Notes
The ‘Colour-Tone Print’: Innovation in the Construction of the Body by Elizabeth Savage
Étienne Delaune (1518/19-83) by Catherine Jenkins
Prints after Raphael, from Marcantonio Raimondi to Giulio Bonasone by Anne Bloemacher
Prins after Designs by Antoine Caron by Ketty Gottardo
Rubens as Designer of Title-Pages by Hans Jakob Meier
Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) by Michael Hunter
The History of the Wig by Elizabeth L. Block
William Blake at Tate Britain by Richard Taws
Maine’s Lithographic Landscapes by Lindsay Leard-Coolidge
From Australia to the British Museum by Mark Macdonald
Max Sulzbachner (1904-85) by Christian Rümelin
The Woodcut in Italy in the Twentieth Century by Martin Hopkinson
Le Livre Futuriste Italien by Stephen J. Bury
Siemen Dijkstra – à bois perdu by Judith Brodie
Contemporary Prints from the Middle East and North Africa at the British Museum by Alex Dika Seggerman
Corrections to ‘Wenceslaus Hollar’s Muscarum scarabeorum verminiumque varie figure Anatomized and Identified’ by Marc Stocker, Julia Kaspar and Phil Sirvid.
Obituary for Michael Bury (1947-2021) by Mark McDonald
Catalogue and Book Reviews
Early Assemblage of Manuscript and Print by David S. Areford
Jacob Cornelisz. ‘Van Oostsanen’ by Daantje Meuwissen
Bruegel: The Complete Graphic Works by Nadine M. Orenstein
Jacob Christoff Le Blon and Trichromatic Printing by Hans Jakob Meier
The Kimono in Print by Anna Jackson
About Print Quarterly
Print Quarterly is the leading international journal dedicated to the art of the print from its origins to the present. It is peer-reviewed. The Journal publishes recent scholarship on a wide range of topics, including printmakers, iconography, social and cultural history, popular culture, print collecting, book illustration, decorative prints, and techniques such as engraving, etching, woodcutting, lithography and digital printmaking. For subscriptions see www.printquarterly.com