Reexamining the Early Modern Ornament Print - RSA Annual Meeting New York 27.03.2014
PART 1
Schedule Information:
Scheduled Time: Thu Mar 27 2014, 3:00 to 4:30pm Building/Room: Hilton, Concourse Level - Concourse H
Session Participants:
Organizer: Femke Speelberg (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Organizer: Madeleine C. Viljoen (New York Public Library)
Chair: Andrew Morrall (Bard Graduate Center)
1. Ornament Prints: Multiple Intentions and Multiple Functions
*Peter Fuhring (Fondation Custodia)
Abstract:
In this paper ornament prints are examined against the historic background of the need of nineteenth-century collectors and training schools to bind together a group of prints that had largely escaped the attention of early print scholarship. The overwhelming presence of ornament in all these prints, whether pure ornament or applied, became instrumental in their naming. In the first studies of this material the use as models for students, craftsmen, and artists played a central role and it is within this approach that the term Ornamentale Vorlageblätter must be understood. It has largely been forgotten that using the print as a model to be copied was only one of many possible functions, however. This equation as role model has masked other essential functions of ornament prints such as supplying information about a designer’s work and about a cultural period, but also offering design possibilities that stimulated the conception of novel designs.
2. From Phenomena to Exempla: The Establishment of the Ornament Print in the Emerging Renaissance Print Mark
*Femke Speelberg (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Abstract:
The introduction of the print medium led to a wide array of experiments regarding its employment during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Pioneers explored different subject matters and modes of representation. From these experiments various distinct genres eventually crystallized. The ornament print is one of the genres that, by the second half of the sixteenth century, had matured into a vital segment of the print market. Focusing on the production, presentation, purpose, and manner of publication of Renaissance ornament prints, in my paper I will explore the development of the genre from its early protagonists to the professional organization and standardization of their production. Generally stated, this development describes the transition from single leaf prints of particular subject matter — phenomena — to suites offering a coherent group of designs, aimed at a broad audience of enthusiasts and professionals as exempla: "to take from them what suited one best."
3. Signs of Knowledge: The Goldsmith-Engraver in the Low Countries and the Dissemination of Design
*Oliver Kik (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
Abstract:
Early European printmaking has always been strongly associated with goldsmith’s workshops. Martin Schongauer, Master E. S. or Albrecht Dürer are well-known examples of early engravers with roots in the goldsmith’s craft. This paper examines the professional position and production of ornament prints of goldsmith-engravers such as Alart DuHameel or the Bruges Master W with the Key. A major part of their output consisted of designs for metalwork such as reliquaries and censors, some with geometrical ground plans, instructing on the object’s construction. Besides providing designs for a wide range of craftsmen, this group of goldsmith-engravers can also be interpreted as an intermediate in the dissemination of geometrical designing knowledge in the visual arts. Often not bound to guild regulations, they were able to position themselves between different professional groups. The paper addresses issues of dissemination of design, professional borders between craftsmen, and self-representation through house marks and monograms.
PART II
Schedule Information:
Scheduled Time: Thu Mar 27 2014, 4:45 to 6:15pm Building/Room: Hilton, Concourse Level - Concourse H
Session Participants:
Organizer: Femke Speelberg (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Organizer: Madeleine C. Viljoen (New York Public Library)
Chair: Peter Parshall (Retired Scholar)
1. Renaissance Ornament Prints and Architectural Engravings: A Question of Origins
*Michael J. Waters (New York University)
Abstract:
Often preserved together but separated by questions of audience, purpose, and use, the relationship between Renaissance ornament prints and architectural engravings has never been fully explored. In this paper, I intend to rectify this lacuna by investigating the shared ancestry of these two types of prints. Specifically, by examining two late fifteenth-century sketchbooks—the so-called Mantegna Codex in Berlin and the Zichy Codex in Budapest—as well as early-sixteenth century prints by Giovanni Antonio da Brescia, the Master of 1515, and a handful of German engravers, I argue that these two genres at their origins were integrally linked in their conception, design, and dissemination. As these examples demonstrate, printed architectural details and other types of ornament (candelabra, vases, trophies, vegetal scrolls, grotesques, etc.) began as mutually informed hybrid reinventions of antiquity that were produced for similar purposes by the same artists using common motifs.
2. Symmetry and Secrets
*Shira Brisman (Columbia University)
Abstract:
The early sixteenth-century engraver lured by Bacchanalian imagery also had a taste for symmetry. Focusing on Bacchanalian frieze engravings (Northern and Italian) from the first decades of this period explores the relationship of symmetry to the decorative. I examine how artists took interest in the patterned array of bodies, punctuating markers, and frontal midpoints, either as design schema to be translated as ornament, or as independent printed images, where classically derived formulas are set against backgrounds and contextualizing spaces. The aim is to define what is decorative about the symmetrical splay, and to imagine how such engravings functioned a design models or as autonomous work of art. The second aim of the paper is to define the symmetrical as a mode against its opposite: the secretive. The secretive image abandons the traces of any relationship to the ornamental by animating the page in a compositional twist, curling content in on itself.
3. The Cosmographo as Engraver of Ornament
*Madeleine C. Viljoen (New York Public Library)
Abstract:
Christoph Jamnitzer’s Neuw Grotteskenbuch (1610) is innovative not only for its unusual illustrations, many of which show ornamental figures acting on an imaginary picture plane, but also for its prefatory essay and poem. Particularly striking are the parallels Jamnitzer draws in the introduction between the cosmographo and his own work as a creator of ornament prints. Studying the meanings of the word cosmographo (one who describes the universe, but also the writer or composer of ornament) together with contemporary ideas about the cosmos, this paper examines Jamnitzer’s choice of the term in light of the imagery of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century decorative sheets.
Schedule Information:
Scheduled Time: Thu Mar 27 2014, 3:00 to 4:30pm Building/Room: Hilton, Concourse Level - Concourse H
Session Participants:
Organizer: Femke Speelberg (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Organizer: Madeleine C. Viljoen (New York Public Library)
Chair: Andrew Morrall (Bard Graduate Center)
1. Ornament Prints: Multiple Intentions and Multiple Functions
*Peter Fuhring (Fondation Custodia)
Abstract:
In this paper ornament prints are examined against the historic background of the need of nineteenth-century collectors and training schools to bind together a group of prints that had largely escaped the attention of early print scholarship. The overwhelming presence of ornament in all these prints, whether pure ornament or applied, became instrumental in their naming. In the first studies of this material the use as models for students, craftsmen, and artists played a central role and it is within this approach that the term Ornamentale Vorlageblätter must be understood. It has largely been forgotten that using the print as a model to be copied was only one of many possible functions, however. This equation as role model has masked other essential functions of ornament prints such as supplying information about a designer’s work and about a cultural period, but also offering design possibilities that stimulated the conception of novel designs.
2. From Phenomena to Exempla: The Establishment of the Ornament Print in the Emerging Renaissance Print Mark
*Femke Speelberg (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Abstract:
The introduction of the print medium led to a wide array of experiments regarding its employment during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Pioneers explored different subject matters and modes of representation. From these experiments various distinct genres eventually crystallized. The ornament print is one of the genres that, by the second half of the sixteenth century, had matured into a vital segment of the print market. Focusing on the production, presentation, purpose, and manner of publication of Renaissance ornament prints, in my paper I will explore the development of the genre from its early protagonists to the professional organization and standardization of their production. Generally stated, this development describes the transition from single leaf prints of particular subject matter — phenomena — to suites offering a coherent group of designs, aimed at a broad audience of enthusiasts and professionals as exempla: "to take from them what suited one best."
3. Signs of Knowledge: The Goldsmith-Engraver in the Low Countries and the Dissemination of Design
*Oliver Kik (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
Abstract:
Early European printmaking has always been strongly associated with goldsmith’s workshops. Martin Schongauer, Master E. S. or Albrecht Dürer are well-known examples of early engravers with roots in the goldsmith’s craft. This paper examines the professional position and production of ornament prints of goldsmith-engravers such as Alart DuHameel or the Bruges Master W with the Key. A major part of their output consisted of designs for metalwork such as reliquaries and censors, some with geometrical ground plans, instructing on the object’s construction. Besides providing designs for a wide range of craftsmen, this group of goldsmith-engravers can also be interpreted as an intermediate in the dissemination of geometrical designing knowledge in the visual arts. Often not bound to guild regulations, they were able to position themselves between different professional groups. The paper addresses issues of dissemination of design, professional borders between craftsmen, and self-representation through house marks and monograms.
PART II
Schedule Information:
Scheduled Time: Thu Mar 27 2014, 4:45 to 6:15pm Building/Room: Hilton, Concourse Level - Concourse H
Session Participants:
Organizer: Femke Speelberg (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Organizer: Madeleine C. Viljoen (New York Public Library)
Chair: Peter Parshall (Retired Scholar)
1. Renaissance Ornament Prints and Architectural Engravings: A Question of Origins
*Michael J. Waters (New York University)
Abstract:
Often preserved together but separated by questions of audience, purpose, and use, the relationship between Renaissance ornament prints and architectural engravings has never been fully explored. In this paper, I intend to rectify this lacuna by investigating the shared ancestry of these two types of prints. Specifically, by examining two late fifteenth-century sketchbooks—the so-called Mantegna Codex in Berlin and the Zichy Codex in Budapest—as well as early-sixteenth century prints by Giovanni Antonio da Brescia, the Master of 1515, and a handful of German engravers, I argue that these two genres at their origins were integrally linked in their conception, design, and dissemination. As these examples demonstrate, printed architectural details and other types of ornament (candelabra, vases, trophies, vegetal scrolls, grotesques, etc.) began as mutually informed hybrid reinventions of antiquity that were produced for similar purposes by the same artists using common motifs.
2. Symmetry and Secrets
*Shira Brisman (Columbia University)
Abstract:
The early sixteenth-century engraver lured by Bacchanalian imagery also had a taste for symmetry. Focusing on Bacchanalian frieze engravings (Northern and Italian) from the first decades of this period explores the relationship of symmetry to the decorative. I examine how artists took interest in the patterned array of bodies, punctuating markers, and frontal midpoints, either as design schema to be translated as ornament, or as independent printed images, where classically derived formulas are set against backgrounds and contextualizing spaces. The aim is to define what is decorative about the symmetrical splay, and to imagine how such engravings functioned a design models or as autonomous work of art. The second aim of the paper is to define the symmetrical as a mode against its opposite: the secretive. The secretive image abandons the traces of any relationship to the ornamental by animating the page in a compositional twist, curling content in on itself.
3. The Cosmographo as Engraver of Ornament
*Madeleine C. Viljoen (New York Public Library)
Abstract:
Christoph Jamnitzer’s Neuw Grotteskenbuch (1610) is innovative not only for its unusual illustrations, many of which show ornamental figures acting on an imaginary picture plane, but also for its prefatory essay and poem. Particularly striking are the parallels Jamnitzer draws in the introduction between the cosmographo and his own work as a creator of ornament prints. Studying the meanings of the word cosmographo (one who describes the universe, but also the writer or composer of ornament) together with contemporary ideas about the cosmos, this paper examines Jamnitzer’s choice of the term in light of the imagery of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century decorative sheets.
ornament-art - 18. Feb, 15:38
