Full Description
Stunning collection of early prints, exploring how they transformed art, belief, power, and the spread of ideas.
This richly illustrated volume offers fresh perspectives on iconic Renaissance and Baroque prints and their enduring impact on viewers. Featuring outstanding examples of over 100 prints by celebrated artists such as Dürer, Rembrandt, Goya, and other Old Masters, the book explores how printmaking sparked imagination, deepened faith, and elicited desire across four centuries.
The book also traces the technical evolution of print media and explores how prints became powerful tools of mass communication, fundamentally altering how ideas and knowledge spread. Its thematic focus reveals the striking ways prints shaped devotional practices, political critique, artistic self-promotion, and class- and gender-based identities in the pre-photographic world.
Contents
Foreword
Maureen Warren
A Passion for Paper: The Johnson Family Collection of Old Master Prints
Ursula M. Johnson and Geraldine A. Johnson
Making a Strong Impression: A Story of Printmaking in Europe, 1475-1800
Sandra F. Racek
Collectors' Marks: A Critical Tool in Researching Print Provenance
Nancy Karrels
Catalogue
No Mere Artisan
Itinerant Aesthetics
Artistic Imagination
Channeling Faith
Inhabited World
Eliciting Desire
Contributors' Biographies
Index
Image Credits
