Spotlight

Brown. An elusive yet very earthly colour

Abstract: What colour is Brown? And, hierarchically, where does it rank compared to other colours such as blue or white? This short essay sheds light on how scholars and practitioners historically understood brown and all its nuances. The word brown and the related hues were associated in baroque art literature with the colour of the ylem ­– of the earth...

Platemarks and Papermarks. Inquiring the Counterproof’s (Absent) Matrix

Abstract: Platemarks and papermarks can bear witness to the production process of a counterproof. In the example of an 18th-century print series, they allow conjectures on the appreciation of the counterproof’s (absent) matrices. A counterproof is a print of a print. As this involves printing from paper on paper the process leaves specific traces which raise questions about the making...

„Ekstatische Membrane”. Wie das Polaroid-Verfahren die Fotografie revolutionierte | “Ecstatic Membrane”. How the Polaroid process revolutionised photography

Abstract: Launched in 1947, the Polaroid Land Camera Model 95 was the first camera, which allowed to see the results of captured images almost instantly – a feature not even questioned by users of digital cameras and smartphones, but which represented a fundamental change in photographic automation at the time. Freed from the confines of the darkroom, the Polaroid offered...

Nature print’s revival?

Abstract: What in retrospect might appear as an astonishing revival of the early modern practice of nature prints in Vienna around 1850, was in fact embedded in a radically new framework of conditions and expectations. The technical procedures included genuinely new networks of cooperating specialists and image-generating causes, and at least promised adaptability for industrial mass production.

Das Monogramm in der Höhle | The Monogram in the Cave

Among the innovations introduced by Albrecht Dürer in the medium of woodcuts is the monogram, which identifies him as the author of the design. Before that, woodcuts – unlike copperplate engravings – were only signed in exceptional cases and if, presumably by the editor. For it was the editor who stood at the end of a complex production chain involving several specialists: the draughtsman who supplied the design, the cutter (Formschneider) who cut it into the wood and the printer who produced the prints on paper. Dürer’s idea quickly found imitators: from the beginning of the 16th century, most woodcuts bore the monogram of the designer. How closely the signature was linked to the claim to originality can be exemplified by Hans Baldung Grien’s woodcut “St. Jerome in the Desert” (1511). The tablet with the monogram, which lays hidden in a cave, clearly demonstrates the creative potential of signatures but also reflects on issues of authorship in the woodcut: While the printed image is the product of the engraver and the printer, the contribution of the artist responsible for the design can only be found as a trace.

Andreas Helmreich und die Zeit der Eisengallustinte

Abstract: Ink has and needs its time – this is the premise through which the article reflects historical recipes to produce and refine ink as those found in Andreas Helmreich’s “Gruendlich und koestlich kunſtbuechlein” from 1563. Tinte hat und braucht ihre Zeit. Was von der Antike bis in die Frühe Neuzeit eine Selbstverständlichkeit war, verliert sich als gelebte Erfahrung schon...

Konstruktionsprozesse zwischen Bild und Text

Abstract: An example from Hans Lencker’s book on the construction of stereometric bodies (‘Perspektiva’, Nuremberg 1571/72) shows how 16th century books strive to stage the use of tools and to present the construction of geometric shapes as a temporal process. 1571/72 lässt der Goldschmied Hans (Johann) Lencker in einer Nürnberger Offizin ein Buch über die ‚Perspectiva‘ drucken – genauer eigentlich...

Ploegen und planten – Narrative des Sehens und Malens von Landschaft | Ploegen and planten – Narratives of Viewing and Painting Landscape

Abstract: Two excerpts by Karel van Mander and Samuel van Hoogstraten illustrate how, according to 17th-century Dutch art theory, viewing and painting of landscapes involve highly physical experiences. In vivid agricultural and horticultural metaphors production converges with the reception and the subjects of landscape painting. In der niederländischen Kunsttheorie des 17. Jahrhundert finden sich anschauliche Formulierungen, die in ihrer Bildhaftigkeit...

Der wissende Hammer (techne)

Abstract: All translations of techne – as craft, making, art etc. – give away some of the complex interrelations of Aristotle’s concept of this “virtue of thought”. A 14th century miniature in a codex with a french translation of the Nicomachean Ethics that Nicole Oresme made around 1372 for the library of the french King Charles V., helps understanding to...

Glasgeschichte(n) schreiben | Telling glass (hi)stories

Abstract: Two visitors to early modern Venice, a Dominican friar from Germany and a Milanese scholar, write about Muranese glass with a time gap of about 70 years. By reporting what they have seen in anecdotal form, they stage contrasting properties of this man-made material: softness and hardness, durability and fragility. The difference in the narratives lies in the attribution...

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