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A Technical Study of Sixteenth-Century Italian Chiaroscuro Woodcuts

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A Technical Study of Sixteenth-Century Italian Chiaroscuro Woodcuts chapter 12 A Technical Study of Sixteenth-Century Italian Chiaroscuro Woodcuts Beth A. Price, Nancy Ash, Haddon A. Dine, Shelley R. Langdale, Ken Sutherland, Lucia Burgio and Jo-Fan Huang In his classic 1935 volume, History of Woodcut, Arthur Hind illuminated manuscripts, block-printed cloth, texts,5 concluded that the ‘hand-colouring’ of fifteenth-century engravings and hand-coloured prints. While these sources woodcuts had not been studied as much as it deserved provide valuable insights into materials and practices, and that ‘a systematic record of the various colours… they do not directly address woodcut colour printing inks. would probably be of considerable value to localise iso- The only known contemporary reference to early mod- lated cuts.’1 His commentary would apply throughout the ern colour printing ink for woodcuts is Giorgio Vasari’s remainder of the twentieth century. Hind himself pro- brief mention of the artist Ugo da Carpi’s use of ‘oil colour’ vided only a brief summary of regional characteristics and in the technical introduction to his Lives of the Artists,6 but a table of colours and pigments in use during the fifteenth no further details regarding the ink composition are given. century, the latter based on Arthur Laurie’s research in Other writers discuss most colourants in the context of the 1910s.2 It was not until the early 2000s that technical paints and varnishes (coatings). The known contemporary studies of hand-coloured prints emerged.3 In contrast, recipes for printing inks are mainly for black; an exception for sixteenth-century woodcuts a systematic record of is a purchase list of materials from the Florentine Ripoli colour printing inks still is lacking. Little direct scientific Press, dated 1481, including two red colourants (cinabro data have been reported on early modern colour printing and lacca) possibly for ink making.7 Scholars attempting to inks and their constituents. Descriptions have been understand the materials used in the colour printing inks inferred largely from fifteenth century historical treatises may be hesitant to rely on these texts without scientific and recipes4 and from object-based studies of paintings, evidence to corroborate analogies to paints and varnishes. This gap in research has restricted the understanding of 1 A.M. Hind, An Introduction to a History of Woodcut with a Detailed sixteenth-century Italian chiaroscuro woodcuts, the most Survey of Work Done in the Fifteenth Century, 2 vols. (Boston and familiar category of colour print in early modern Europe. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1935), 167–70. The first long-term, systematic scientific study of a large 2 A.P. Laurie, The Materials of the Painter’s Craft in Europe and Egypt, group of these woodcuts was initiated by the Philadelphia from Earliest Times to the End of the XVIIth Century, with Some Museum of Art (pma) in 2009.8 The objectives were to Account of Their Preparation and Use (London: T.N. Foulis, 1910); A.P. Laurie, Pigments and Mediums of the Old Masters with a Special Chapter on Microphotographic Study of Brushwork ([S.l.]: Ketham’s recipe for ‘Cloth Printing Ink, Late fifteenth century, Macmillan, 1914). Flanders’, London, British Museum, Sloane ms 345, in C.H. Bloy, 3 See T. Primeau, ‘The Materials and Technology of Renaissance and A History of Printing Ink, Balls and Rollers, 1440–1850 (London: Baroque Hand-Colored Prints’, in S. Dackerman, Painted Prints: The Adams & Mackay, 1967), 100–01, no. 6. Bloy quoted from C.L. Revelation of Color in Northern Renaissance & Baroque Engravings, Eastlake, Materials for a History of Oil Painting, 2 vols. (London: Etchings & Woodcuts (Baltimore: The Baltimore Museum of Art; Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1847, 1869), 1: 285–86. University Park, pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), For fifteenth-century printing ink recipes, see D. Oltrogge, ‘Colour 49–75, 271–78; S. Fletcher, L. Glinsman and D. Oltrogge, ‘The Stamping’, this volume, 51–64. Pigments on Hand-Colored Fifteenth-Century Relief Prints from 5 For the scientific analysis of red typographic ink in the Doheny the Collections of the National Gallery of Art and the Germanisches Gutenberg Bible, see R.N. Schwab et al., ‘New Evidence on the Nationalmuseum’, in P.W. Parshall and R. Schoch, The Woodcut in Printing of the Gutenberg Bible: The Inks in the Doheny Copy’, The Fifteenth-century Europe, exh. cat. (Washington, d.c.: National Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 79 (1985), 375–410, Gallery of Art, 2009), 277–96; and D. Oltrogge, ‘Illuminating the esp. 389. The ink was found to be ‘rich in mercury;’ supporting data Print: The Use of Color in Fifteenth-Century Prints and Book are not presented. Illumination’, in Ibid., 299–315. 6 è imbrattata di colore ad olio, in G. Vasari, Le vite de’ piv eccellenti pit- 4 The earliest known Western ‘printing’ ink recipe (c. 1400) pertains tori, scvltori, e architettori, 2nd ed. (Florence: Giunti, 1568), 66. to block-printing (stamping) on cloth. See C. Cennini, ‘Capitolo 7 See P.V. Fineschi, Notizie storiche sopra la Stamperia di Ripoli clxxiii Il Modo Di Lavorare Colla Forma Dipinti in Panno’, in (Florence: Moücke, 1781), 49. Here, lacca is interpreted as the mate- G.E. Carlo Milanesi, Il libro dell’arte, o Trattato della pittura di Cennino rial utilised for red dye/lake pigment. Cennini da Colle di Valdelsa, ed. C. Milanesi, G. Milanesi (Firenze: Le 8 The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Victoria and Albert Museum Monnier, 1859), 126–28. For Northern treatises, see Johannes De (v&a) became collaborators in 2011. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004290112_014 A Technical Study of 16th C. Italian Chiaroscuro Woodcuts 141 identify the types of colour inks and their constituents, light and dark [chiaro et scuro], something new and never develop a protocol to describe their colours and palettes, before done, a beautiful innovation’ that would appeal to and document the papers’ watermarks. This paper de scribes lovers of drawing (Introduction, Fig. 1, p. 6).12 Credited selected results from a group of thirty-nine woodcuts that with this invention by Giorgio Vasari,13 Ugo often is cited have been analysed to date, namely works by the artists as the first Italian printmaker to create chiaroscuro wood- Ugo da Carpi and Giuseppe Niccolò Vicentino. Additional cuts inspired by the tonal range achieved in the wash findings will be published at the conclusion of the study. drawings known as ‘chiaroscuro’. However, a two-block The goal is to provide scientific data to promote scholarly example attributed to Lucantonio degli Uberti was discussion about the material nature of the impressions, printed in Venice in 1516, and the primacy of Ugo’s prints their original appearance and alterations in colours, and, in the origination of single-sheet colour woodcuts in Italy possibly by extension, their authenticity, attribution and cannot be certain.14 Ugo was nonetheless instrumental in chronology. developing the integrated block technique and expanding approaches to the use of colour.15 Printing inks, such as those that would have been used for Background on Chiaroscuro Woodcut Prints and woodcuts and typography, have two main constituents: colou- Printing Inks rant and vehicle (binding medium), called ‘varnish’ in the early vernacular. The colourant particles were dispersed or dissolved Chiaroscuro woodcuts generally are printed in black and/or in the vehicle to bind them to a substrate. Historical recipes colour inks from two or more blocks. The colour or tone refer to vehicles made from vegetable oils, usually linseed and block(s) provide the overall background and/or middle tone less often nut oils.16 The oils were prepared by heating, boiling for the image, whereas the unprinted areas of white paper serve as highlights, in the style of tonal drawings executed 12 ‘…et havendo io trovato modo nuovo di stampare chiaro et scuro, with wash and/or on tinted paper.9 Italian practitioners cosa nuova et mai più non fatta, et é cosa bella, et utile a molti che employed two main approaches, which are distinguished by hanno piacer di dissegno…’ see M. Gualandi, Di Ugo da Carpi e dei the interrelationships of the woodblocks. In one approach, conti da Panico: Memorie e note (Bologna: Società Tip. Bolognese a ‘key’ block carries the primary linear image design, which E Ditta Sassi, 1854), 22. English translation from L. Pon, Raphael, would be legible if printed on its own. A second block pro- Dürer, and Marcantonio Raimondi: Copying and the Italian vides broad midtone areas with portions carved away to cre- Renaissance Print. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 75. ate the unprinted highlights.10 In the other approach, inter- Original in Archivio di Sato di Venezia, Notatorio del Collegio dependent designs are carved into two or more blocks such Reg 18, 1515–1520, c38v. See also facsimile in Servolini, La xilogra- fia (A. Mondador: Milan, 1950), 153. that no single block would be legible if printed indepen- 13 G. Vasari, Vite, 1,1: 65–66. dently – all are essential to form a coherent image. Here, the 14 The signed and dated Uberti print (London, British Museum, block for the darkest ink, often referred to as the ‘key’ block 1852,0612.105) is a reverse copy of Hans Baldung (Grien)’s (in this essay called ‘darkest/key’ block), may carry crucial Preparation for the Witches’ Sabbath, first printed in Strasbourg linear elements of the design but would not produce a legi- in 1510 [see London, British Museum, 1834,0712.73 (Bartsch 55)]. ble image if printed by itself. The colours in chiaroscuro With thanks to Elizabeth Savage for this reference. For discus- woodcuts typically are related closely to articulate a range sion of the Northern European origins of the use of multiple of tonal values from chiaro (light) to scuro (shadow), defin- blocks to create color and tonal woodcuts, see D.
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