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Press Release
CONTACT
Matt Montgomery
401/454-6793, mmontgom@risd.edu
The RISD Museum of Art Presents The Brilliant Line: Following the Early Modern Engraver, 1480-1650
On view: Friday, September 18, through Sunday, January 3, 2010
Providence, RI—The RISD Museum of Art presents The Brilliant Line: Following the Early Modern Engraver, 1480-1650, featuring 85 objects from the RISD Museum’s outstanding collection of Renaissance and Baroque prints—until now unpublished and rarely viewed—as well as objects from major public institutions such as the National Gallery of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Visitors to the exhibition will receive a privileged view into this prized resource. Although most people see and even touch an engraving every day—US currency and many stamps are engraved on steel—few artists work in the medium today. In the Renaissance engraving was new, and one of the world’s first reproducible art forms, full of possibility for the spread of designs of all types throughout Europe.
The Brilliant Line focuses on the height of the medium, from 1480 to 1650, when engravers made dramatic and rapid visual changes to engraving technique as they responded to the demands of reproducing artworks in other media. The Brilliant Line follows these visual transformations and offers new insight into the special inventiveness and technical virtuosity of Renaissance and Baroque (Early Modern) engravers. The exhibition will travel to the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL in April, 2010.
Renaissance engravings, objects of exquisite beauty and incomparable intricacy, are composed entirely of lines. Using a burin (a metal tool with a lozenge-shaped tip), an engraver carves recessed grooves into a copperplate. After the plate is inked and its flat surfaces wiped clean, the copperplate is forced through a press against dampened paper, onto which the ink pulled from inside the lines transfers, printing the incised image in reverse. Artists began using this intaglio process in Europe as early as 1430.
Engravers learned quickly from one another by buying and trading engravings and meeting fellow practitioners on transcontinental travels. The exhibition takes an international approach, following connections among engravers from Nuremberg, to Rome, to Paris, and the cumulative effects of the knowledge they shared. Objects on view lay out the medium’s continuities, or “systems”—those visual tricks that responded so well to the pictorial problems of tone, texture, and volume—while highlighting the exceptional ingenuity of individual engravers. Visitors will be invited to think about the relationships between spectacular prints by Albrecht Dürer and Marcantonio Raimondi, Cornelis Cort and Agostino Carracci, or Martin Schongauer and Robert Nanteuil. Where many Renaissance print exhibitions have emphasized the regional specificity of particular schools, assembling all printmaking techniques together, this exhibition outlines the fluid geography of engraving and the particular history of one medium as it was shaped by its specific applications and circumstances of production.
The exhibition also features an exciting collaboration between Associate Curator Emily Peters and RISD Associate Professor of Printmaking Andrew Raftery, a practicing engraver. Raftery redrew and analyzed several engravings in the show, creating an interactive in-gallery and online Flash program that allows visitors to visually unpack engraving’s complex visual language. A video features Raftery engraving and printing. Through this and other key comparisons in the gallery, the exhibition brings the early modern engraver’s working process to life. The online component may be found at www.risdmuseum.org/.
PUBLICATION
Accompanying the exhibition, a 156-page catalogue, The Brilliant Line: Following the Early Modern Engraver, 1480-1650, includes over 150 images, with many magnified details of engraved lines, and three essays, by exhibition curator Emily J. Peters, Evelyn Lincoln (Associate Professor of Art History, Brown University), and Andrew Stein Raftery (Associate Professor of Printmaking, RISD). Topics addressed include how engraving’s restrictive materials and the physical process of engraving itself informed its visual language; the context for the spread of particular engraving styles throughout Europe as well as their reception; and the interests, knowledge, and skills that Renaissance viewers applied when viewing and comparing engravings by style or school. The catalogue is published by the RISD Museum ($49.00 soft cover).
ORGANIZATION
The Brilliant Line is organized by Dr. Emily Peters who is a specialist in Northern Renaissance art, with a focus on printmaking in the Netherlands in the 16th century. She is Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at The RISD Museum. Since joining RISD in 2005, she has curated ten exhibitions, including From Dürer to Van Gogh: Gifts from Eliza Metcalf Radeke and Helen Metcalf Danforth; British Panoramic Landscapes, 1750-1810; and Design and Description: Renaissance and Baroque Drawings. Her publications include the recent Renaissance Quarterly article, “Printing Ritual: The Performance of Community in Christopher Plantin’s La Joyeuse & Magnifique Entrée de Monseigneur Francoys...d'Anjou (Antwerp, 1582), 2008. Dr. Peters is a member of the Print Council of America and CoDART (Curators of Dutch and Flemish art).
PROGRAMMING
Opening Celebration for The Brilliant Line: Following the Modern Engraver
Radeke Society Members and Special Guests Preview Tour, 5:30pm
Wednesday, September 16, 6 – 8pm
This invitation-only celebration will include a first look at this exquisite exhibition, which explores the art of engraving and its dynamic transformations during the European Renaissance. Showcasing works by the most outstanding masters, from great innovators such as Albrecht Dürer to virtuoso specialists such as Agostino Carracci, the exhibition demonstrates how engravers learned from one another and pushed their art to astonishing technical heights.
Member Preview Day
Thursday, September 17, 2009, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Museum members are invited to view the exhibition before the general public. Please show your membership card for admission.
Curator Conversation: Bringing to Life the Early Modern Engraver
Thursday, September 17, 6 pm
Waterman Gallery
In the Renaissance engraving was new, and one of the world’s first reproducible art forms, full of possibility for the spread of designs of all types throughout Europe. Emily Peters, Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs and Andrew Raftery, RISD Associate Professor of Printmaking discuss their collaboration and offer new insight into the special inventiveness and technical virtuosity of Renaissance and Baroque engravers.
Quality in Renaissance and Baroque Engraving: The Critics’ Response
Wednesday, October 28, 7pm
This special lecture by world-renowned scholar of Renaissance prints Michael Bury will address the praise and censure of prints in Renaissance Europe. In association with the exhibition The Brilliant Line: Following the Early Modern Engraver, 1480-1650, Bury considers how an engraving’s quality of line was measured and defined in the period. Michael Bury is Reader Emeritus of History of Art at the University of Edinburgh. His 2001 exhibition at the British Museum, The Print in Italy, 1550-1620, whose catalogue won the prestigious Eric Mitchell Prize, was a groundbreaking reassessment of the reproductive print in Europe.
Tuesday Talks Series: Lines of Communication in Renaissance Europe
Held in conjunction with the exhibition, The Brilliant Line: Following the Early Modern Engraver, 1480-1650, this lecture series explores Renaissance artists, the cities in which they worked and the transcontinental exchange of images and techniques that culminated in acclaimed works of art. Lectures begin at 1pm in the Michael P. Metcalf Auditorium, Chace Center. Fee: $15 per lecture for nonmembers ($35 for 3-lecture series); free to members. To register, contact Deb Clemons at 401 454-6530 or dclemons@risd.edu.
Tuesday, October 13
Rubens in Black and White: The Art, Intellectual Property, and Marketing of Engravings
Dr. Jeffrey Muller, Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Brown University
Tuesday, November 10
Michelangelo and Raphael from Florence to Rome
Dr. Mary Bergstein, Professor and Department Head of History of Art and Visual Culture, RISD
Tuesday, December 8
Breughel's Paradoxical Virtues
Dr. Margaret Carroll, Professor of Art History, Wellesley College
Saturday, November 14, 9am-12pm
Art/Works: Engraving Workshop
Although most people see and even touch an engraving every day—US currency and many stamps are engraved on steel—few artists work in the medium today. Practicing engraver and RISD Associate Professor of Printmaking, Andrew Raftery, demonstrates the preparation and step-by-step execution of the engraving process. Discover the tools and techniques used by early modern engravers and try your hand at making a mark. This exclusive workshop ends with a guided visit to the exhibition The Brilliant Line. Members $45; Non-members $75; Fee includes admission to the Museum. Space is limited. Preregistration is required. Registration deadline is October 30. To register, contact Kristen Powich, Manager of Membership, at 401-454-6321 or kpowich@risd.edu.
The RISD Museum of Art, a world-class museum in Providence, RI, was founded as part of Rhode Island School of Design in 1877. Its permanent collection of more than 84,000 objects includes paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, costume, furniture, and other works of art from every part of the world, including objects from Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and art of all periods from Asia, Europe, and the Americas, up to the latest in contemporary art. In addition, the Museum offers a wide array of educational and public programs to more than 100,000 visitors annually.
