Dr Sheila McTighe


course description


The course provides an introduction to print culture, mainly in southern Europe, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  In 2012-13, we will take advantage of a major exhibition of early modern Spanish drawings and prints mounted at the British Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings. The curator of the exhibition, Dr. Mark McDonald, will be a guest lecturer for the course, and there will be opportunities for MA students to participate in various events associated with the show.  

 

The course will examine the notion of early modern ‘print culture’, following the work done by historians of the book and the publishing industry. We will be looking at the means by which new printed media brought about the first large-scale international market in the arts, transforming the circulation of artistic ideas and fostering the development of new forms of imagery.  At the same time, international trade in printed images led to a marketplace for religious and political ideals and public values. The enormous impact of Dutch, Flemish and German prints on the arts in southern Europe will also be a core part of our studies.

 

Although we will be looking in large part at ‘art prints’, and often those by well-known artists, we will also study popular prints, reproductive prints and printed images from books and pamphlets. In the introductory part of the course, students will become familiar with all the different types of printmaking techniques and processes, as well as learning about the full range of subjects that were represented within printed media. Students will also consider the various publishing models and audiences for early modern printmakers, ranging from the popular to the courtly and connoisseurial. The second part of the course, the special option, takes up the historian Roger Chartier’s description of a ‘culture of print’ in order to extend it into the realm of printed imagery. Through the lens of ‘print culture’ we can look at the enormous impact of prints on public life in southern Europe, from the spread of literacy and visual literacy, to the role of images in religious devotion and religious conflict, to issues in high and low or popular culture.

 

Classes will regularly be held in the prints and drawings collections of the British Museum. There will be group trips to the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Print Room of the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, and the British Library.  Some of the printmakers we will be studying include Marcantonio Raimondi, Parmigianino, Agostino and Annibale Carracci, Cornelis Cort,  Jacques Callot, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Abraham Bosse, Jusepe Ribera, Pietro Testa, Stefano della Bella, and Francesco de Zurbaran. We will look at the reception of Rembrandt in Italy and France, the relation between Flemish printing houses and Spain, Italy, and France, and the heritage of Albrecht Dürer, Lucas van Leyden, Hendrick Goltzius and Rembrandt through the presence of their prints in Italian, French and Spanish collections.


language and other requirements


Standard entry requirements.