Colour Printing in Intaglio Before C.1700: a Technical History1

chapter 3 Colour Printing in Intaglio before c.1700: A Technical History1

Ad Stijnman

In the first three centuries of the early hand-press period, Monochrome intaglio printmakers experimented with all kinds of intaglio colour printing methods. From the second half of the Intaglio colour printing developed only gradually before fifteenth century until the creation of the first technique 1700. Monochrome colour-printed engravings and etch- that reproduced colours accurately c.1700, printers and ings appear regularly from the fifteenth century, and some designers used innovative and experimental printing experiments with polychrome intaglio printing date from techniques and inks to convey different kinds of informa- the time that chiaroscuro woodcut emerged en force in the tion and create distinctive visual effects. Many of their 1520s. The earliest example printed with non-black ink is a works were single-sheet prints, many were book illustra- Madonna with Child in a Garden (c.1465–67) by Master es, tions and many have not been recorded as being printed printed with white ink on black prepared paper (Fig. 3.1). in colour. The copperplate was engraved specifically to be printed in The earliest known colour-printed engravings, from white upon black, as the engraved highlights and whites the 1460s, were monochrome (i.e. non-black). Polychrome of the eyes show. This may be regarded as an experiment, processes (for printing an image in multiple colours) both in artistic design and technical skill. developed from c.1500, but the available materials and Other fifteenth-, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century technologies limited the range of hues. Once intaglio plates that were printed in monochrome blue, green, printmaking was established as the primary graphic pro- brown or red are more commonly known in black, although cess in Europe in the seventeenth century, colour-printed there are exceptions. The reasons for monochrome colour engravings and etchings appeared on a larger scale. A printing may have ranged from practical, such as to distin- radically different approach was developed by Jacob guish designs for goldsmiths (printed in yellow-brown) Christoff Le Blon around 1710:2 he superimposed impressions of three different plates inked in blue, yellow and red, respectively, using a keyplate in black or blue if nec- essary, to create one image. For the first time, colour prints could accurately represent all colours. His trichro- matic method led to the first commercially viable approach to colour printing on a mass scale and led to our cmyk printing (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow, with a black Keyplate). This chapter presents a brief historical overview of intaglio colour printmaking, incorporating art historical and bibliographical research as well as the history of printing techniques. It argues that some methods of colour printing in intaglio were greatly more common than has been realised, and it calls for an interdisciplinary approach centred on the role of printers (i.e. of books and of single- sheet artworks).

1 For an extensive, illustrated discussion, see A. Stijnman, Engraving and Etching 1400–2000: A History of the Development of Manual Figure 3.1 Master E.S., Madonna and Child in a Garden, Intaglio Printmaking Processes (London: Archetype; Houten: Hes & c.1465–67, engraving, printed with white ink on De Graaf, 2012), 341–65. black-coated paper, 10.6 cm in diameter 2 On the spelling of Le Blon’s given names, see the Foreword, X, Washington, dc, National Gallery of Art, nt. 8. New Century Fund, 1999.27.1

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004290112_005 Colour Printing in Intaglio before c.1700: A Technical History 43 from those for silversmiths (printed in blue),3 to com- teenth century. However, a composite engraving from a mercial, making the prints more attractive to collectors. book printed c.1476 was recently identified as both the ear- For instance, a number of the etchings of the School of liest known multi-colour engraved image and the earliest Fontainebleau (produced 1542–48) are printed monochrome known multi-colour book illustration (Fig. 3.3). Each plate in red-browns or purple-browns, possibly to appeal to used in this three-layer volvelle (paper instrument com- collectors of popular red-crayon drawing in the French prised of layers of rotating dials) was inked in monochrome court.4 Some were private, rather than commercial, under- red or black and then manually ‘printed’ by rubbing (the takings: Hercules Segers’ famous but rare etchings from rolling press was not yet available in the area where it was c.1615–30 were printed in blue, brown, green and grey on made). However, it is included here because it is an integral white paper, and pale yellow and white on dark prepared part of the otherwise mechanically printed book and the paper (but not in orange, red or purple inks), and he altered volvelle itself, if not its individual parts, was created with nearly all of the rare surviving impressions by further hand- different colours of printing ink. In the three surviving cop- colouring so that each impression has unique features.5 ies in which the volvelle survives intact, the base plate and Monochrome intaglio printing is thought to have been two dials are made of different colour combinations.7 unusual – and, in the grand scale, it was – but it was undertaken much more often than has been realised. One reason À la Poupée Printing is that some monochrome intaglio prints have darkened or The oldest extant example of a polychrome intaglio print faded significantly, so they now look browned or greyish is an impression of an engraving of The Madonna Adored respectively. For instance, the colour of the four engraved by Saints of the Dominican Order (c.1525) by Agostino plates in John Shute, The first and chief groundes of architec- Veneziano of which the Virgin and Child is inked in red ture (London: Thomas Marsh for John Shute, 1563) is invari- and the remainder in blue. More specimens are found in ably described as ‘grey’ (if it is mentioned at all), However, the following period; the title plates for Wendel Dietterlin’s in the copy at Cambridge University Library, the presence Architectura (1593, 1595) have the lower inserted plates of blue pigment particles on the verso of most, and also the inked à la poupée in red and black, respectively. The same greyish blue discolouration of the ink on the recto and combination of colour printing techniques is repeated in greenish discolouration on the verso of one indicate that a number of copies of the second edition (1598) expanded they may have originally been an indigo blue (Fig. 3.2); the to five volumes, each volume with its own title page. A green presumably derives from the yellowing of the oil copy of Heinrich Zeising’s Theatrum machinarum has the medium in which the blue pigment is suspended.6 The etched title page of the first part (1607) inked à la poupée number of extant monochrome intaglio prints suggests in green, black and violet inks. The colour printing clari- that a case can now be made for its continuous production, fied and decorated the image. in increasing quantities, from the late fifteenth century. Between 1688 and 1698, Johannes Teyler, a philosopher by training and mathematician and military engineer by profession, financed a Dutch workshop for the printing of Polychrome engravings and etchings in a novel manner.8 One plate was inked in several different colours and printed in one run Colour printing in ‘composite prints’, or prints made of through the press, making each impression effectively a smaller prints joined together, became less rare in the nine- unique ‘printed painting’ with deep purples, vivid oranges, cool turquoise blues and lush greens. This process, later 3 M. Grimm, C. Kleine-Tebbe and A. Stijnman, Lichtspiel und known as à la poupée printing, was first described in the Farbenpracht: Entwicklungen des Farbdrucks 1500–1800, exh. cat., third edition of Abraham Bosse’s treatise on etching (1745).9 Wolfenbütteler Hefte 29 (Wolfenbüttel: Herzog August Bibliothek; It was next described forty years later by Robert Laurie: Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011), 86–91. 4 C. Jenkins, ‘The Chiaroscuro Woodcuts of the Master nd at Fontainebleau’, Print Quarterly 30.2 (2013), 131–43, esp. 138; 7 A. Stijnman and E. Upper (now Savage) ‘Color Prints before Erhard C. Jenkins, Printmaking Masters of Fontainebleau, exh. cat. (New Ratdolt: Engraved Paper Instruments in Lazarus Beham’s Buch von York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, forthcoming 2017). der Astronomie (Cologne: Nicolaus Götz, c.1476)’, Gutenberg 5 See J. Nakamura, ‘On Hercules Segers’, this volume, 189–195. Jahrbuch 89 (2014), 86–105. 6 Technical examination remains to be undertaken, but impressions in 8 See the volumes on Johannes Teyler by A. Stijnman, ed. S. Turner, in the copy at Cambridge University Library, Syn.3.56.1, appear to have New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish (Ouderkerk aan den IJssel: Sound & been printed in an indigo ink that has faded to grey. E. Upper (now Vision, forthcoming 2016). See S. Turner, ‘Opus typo-chromaticum’, Savage), ‘Tudor Colour Printing: Intaglio Colour Printing’, Cambridge this volume, 196–206. University Library Exhibitions, accessed 15 Janaury 2014, https://exhi- 9 A. Bosse, De la maniere de graver a l’eau forte et au burin, ed. bitions.lib.cam.ac.uk/tudorcolour/case/intaglio -colour-printing/. C.-N. Cochin, 3rd ed. (Paris: Jombert, 1745), 128.