BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Gallery of Art -- West Wing -- Exhibit: Sharing Images: Renaissance Prints Into Maiolica and Bronze

DC -- Natl Gallery of Art -- West Wing -- Exhibit: Sharing Images: Renaissance Prints Into Maiolica and Bronze:

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Description of Pictures: Sharing Images: Renaissance Prints Into Maiolica and Bronze
April 1 – August 5, 2018
Inspired by the acquisition of the important William A. Clark maiolica (glazed Italian ceramics) collection from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and drawing largely on the Gallery’s newly expanded holdings, this exhibition brings together some 90 objects to highlight the impact of Renaissance prints on maiolica and bronze plaquettes, the two media most dramatically influenced by the new technology of image replication. Focusing on designs by major artists such as Andrea Mantegna, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Parmigianino, and Albrecht Dürer, the exhibition tells the story of how printed images were transmitted, transformed, and translated onto ceramics and small bronze reliefs, creating a shared visual canon across artistic media and geographical boundaries. The first exhibition of its kind in the United States, Sharing Images is accompanied by a publication that provides a comprehensive introduction to different aspects of the phenomenon, from the role of 15th-century prints and the rediscovery of ancient art to the importance of illustrated books and the artistic exchanges between Italy and northern Europe.
Organization: Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington
Sponsors: The exhibition is made possible by a generous grant from the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Charitable Trust.
Additional funding is provided by The Exhibition Circle of the National Gallery of Art.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. NGASHA_180428_001.JPG: Sharing Images Renaissance Prints into Maiolica and Bronza
2. NGASHA_180428_017.JPG: Sharing Images Renaissance Prints into Maiolica and Bronza The fifteenth century in Europe was an age of technological revolution. The development of the arts of printing images and books transformed the way Europeans shared and absorbed visual and verbal information. Produced in multiples, easily transportable, relatively affordable, and almost immediately employed as visual models, both prints and illustrated books influenced artists and craftsmen across the continent more profoundly than any other medium, and their impact was nowhere more conspicuous than in the production of maiolica (tin-glazed ceramics) and bronze plaquettes. By the late 1400s, glazing techniques that had been developed and closely guarded for centuries by Islamic craftsmen were mastered by Italian potters. Their use of a tin glaze provided a pure white background for the pottery painters, who also benefited from a dramatic expansion of pigments available to them. The tin greatly reduced the chance of the glaze running when fired in a kiln, enabling artists to paint detailed scenes on ceramics known as istoriato ware (meaning painted with stories). Around the same time, the interest in classical antiquity led Italian sculptors to revive the ancient art of bronzecasting and to make bronze statuettes and small, decorative plaques, which served as collectors' items, desk accessories, or decorative fittings for furniture or other objects. The creative interaction between these phenomena -- printed images, tin-glazed ceramics, and cast bronzes -- is the theme that runs through this exhibition. The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art. The exhibition is made possible by a generous grant from the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Charitable Trust. Additional funding is provided by The Exhibition Circle of the National Gallery of Art.
3. NGASHA_180428_021.JPG: Mantegna and Bronze Court painter to the princely Gonzaga family that ruled Mantua in northern Italy, the Paduan Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431 – 1506) was one of the most innovative artists of his generation. As a result of his shrewd decision, around 1470, to publish his designs through the new medium of engraving, Mantegna's erudite compositions, closely modeled on ancient sculptures and archaeological remains, strongly influenced other artists in northern Italy, especially sculptors working with bronze. Sculptors sometimes copied Mantegna's compositions in their entirety, as seen in the plaquette by Andrea Briosco (Padua, 1470 – 1532) depicting the Old Testament heroine Judith who saved her people from destruction by decapitating their enemy, the Assyrian general Holofernes. In contrast, the artist Moderno (Verona, 1467 – 1528) consulted Mantegna's Entombment with Three Birds only for the background and the four female figures that appear in the foreground of the engraving and embrace Christ in the plaquette.
4. NGASHA_180428_023.JPG: Follower of Andrea Mantegna Judith with the Head of Holofernes, c 1480
5. NGASHA_180428_026.JPG: Andrea Briosco, called Riccio Judith with the Head of Holofernes, early 16th century
6. NGASHA_180428_035.JPG: Moderno The Entombment, late 15th-early 16th century
7. NGASHA_180428_041.JPG: Workshop of Andrea Mantegna The Entombment with Three Birds, c 1490/1500
8. NGASHA_180428_068.JPG: Workshop of Andrea Mantegna Battle of the Sea Gods (left half), c 1485/1488
9. NGASHA_180428_071.JPG: Workshop of Andrea Mantegna Battle of the Sea Gods (right half), c 1485/1488
10. NGASHA_180428_077.JPG: Sea Gods Mantegna's engravings, more than any other printed source, inspired translations into sculptural plaquettes and bronze statuettes. The theme of his Battle of the Sea Gods, inspired by Roman sarcophagus reliefs, may be an allegory of the destructive forces of human jealousy, as indicated by the emaciated woman at left holding a tablet inscribed Invidia (Latin for envy). The print provided the model for the bronze Neptune and sea monster shown here and for a plaquette, Combat of Ichthyocentaurs. In Greek mythology, ichthyocentaurs were half-human marine gods with the forelegs of a horse and tail of a fish.
11. NGASHA_180428_079.JPG: Hercules and Antaeus During one of his twelve labors, the Greek hero Hercules was said to have vanquished the half-giant Antaeus. Being the son of Gaia (Earth), Antaeus remained invincible as long as he was in contact with the ground, so Hercules lifted him up and crushed him to death. The gruesome feat was a popular subject with Renaissance artists, who were fascinated by the dynamic struggle between two naked bodies, as famously displayed in a Roman statue now in Florence. Both Andrea Mantegna and the Florentine artist Antonio Pollaiuolo (c. 1431 – 1498) admired the ancient statue, and their versions of the subject, broadcast in print, were soon copied by bronzecasters and maiolica painters.
12. NGASHA_180428_082.JPG: Severo da Ravenna Neptune on a Sea Monster, c 1500/1509 Attributed to Workshop of Alessandro Leopardi Combat of Ichthyocentaurs, early 16th century
13. NGASHA_180428_091.JPG: Antiquity and Michelangelo Engravings produced in Rome depicting its numerous ancient statues, buildings, reliefs, and inscriptions spread a growing knowledge of the remains of Roman art and architecture more rapidly and effectively than ever before. Prints reproducing the city's artistic treasures could be seen and copied by artists near and far, becoming a powerful catalyst of artistic renewal and creating a shared visual culture throughout Europe. One of the most imitated images was also one of the most recently rediscovered. When an ancient marble statue depicting the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons being killed by snakes was unearthed in a Roman vineyard in 1506, it sparked a frenzy of excitement. Almost immediately, the statue was reproduced in paintings, drawings, bronze statues, and prints, which transformed the dramatic sculpture into one of the first "viral" images of the early modern period. Ancient art was a fundamental source of inspiration for Michelangelo (1475 – 1564), who was present at the unearthing of the Laocoön. Populated by muscular bodies in dynamic poses, Michelangelo's so-called presentation drawings (works meant as personal gifts for his intimate friends) reveal a taste for mythological subjects and erudite allegories that would have appealed to his aristocratic patrons. Against Michelangelo's expressed wishes these refined drawings were copied in other drawings, carved gems, bronze plaquettes, and prints. These in turn were quickly copied onto ceramics. Broadcast through print, Michelangelo's designs were thus shared with a wider audience than the artist had ever intended.
14. NGASHA_180428_093.JPG: Jean de Gourmont I Laocoon, first half 16h century
15. NGASHA_180428_096.JPG: Marco Dente The Laocoon, c 1515-1527
16. NGASHA_180428_100.JPG: Moderno The Flagellation, late 15th-early 16th century
17. NGASHA_180428_103.JPG: Attributed to Niccolo Boldrini after Titian Caricature of the Laocoon Group, c 1540/1545
18. NGASHA_180428_107.JPG: Agnolo Bronzino or Giulio Clovio after Michelangelo The Fall of Phaethon, 1555/1559
19. NGASHA_180428_112.JPG: Giovanni Bernardi The Fall of Phaeton, 1533 or after
20. NGASHA_180428_114.JPG: Nicholas Beatrizet after Michelangelo The Fall of Phaeton, 1540-1566
21. NGASHA_180428_117.JPG: The Dream Michelangelo's enigmatic drawing depicts a young man being roused by a trumpeting angel and surrounded by symbols of gluttony, sloth, lust, and other vices. The beautiful youth may personify the human mind or soul being awakened to a higher spiritual existence. The work may have been made for his friend Tommaso de' Cavalieri, who certainly owned it soon after it was made. Like other drawings Michelangelo made for him, The Dream was copied and published in print, allowing the private work to function as a model for maiolica painters. As the inscription on the back of the plate reveals, this faithful translation into maiolica erroneously interprets the obscure subject as the more familiar biblical story of the dream of Daniel. Separated from their initial context, Michelangelo's compositions could be reinterpreted at will by craftsmen who had never set eyes on the original drawings.
22. NGASHA_180428_124.JPG: Michelangelo's Presentation Drawings Around 1533, Michelangelo made a number of drawings derived from Ovid's Metamorphoses, a narrative poem containing more than 250 myths that was first published around AD 8. The drawings were gifts for Tommaso de' Cavalieri, a young Roman nobleman with whom Michelangelo was deeply smitten. The daringly homo-erotic depiction of Ganymede -- a beautiful boy kidnapped by an enamored Jupiter in the guise of an eagle -- reveals the influence of the Laocoön in the depiction of a struggling male body, while the dynamic Fall of Phaeton was probably based on a Roman sarcophagus. Meant as personal gifts, these highly finished drawings were soon copied, carved in crystal, cast in bronze, and published in print. Derivations such as these transformed the private compositions into very public images of Michelangelo's art
23. NGASHA_180428_125.JPG: Nicolas Beatrizet after Michelangelo The Rape of Ganymede, 1542
24. NGASHA_180428_129.JPG: Giovanni Bernardi The Rape of Ganymede, 1532 or after
25. NGASHA_180428_131.JPG: The Laocoön Laocoön was a priest of Apollo. He, along with his two sons, was killed by serpents for attempting to convince his fellow Trojans not to bring the Greeks' fateful wooden horse into their city walls. The tragic episode in the Trojan Wars was famously recounted in Virgil's Aeneid, written in the first century BC, and the marble group now in the Vatican is the only surviving ancient statue of the subject. Working in Rome, the engraver Marco Dente (1493 – 1527) made two prints of the Laocoön, one based on the recently discovered statue, the other derived from an illustration in a late antique manuscript of the Aeneid. Both versions circulated widely, were endlessly copied, and contributed to making the Laocoön one of the most influential images in European art. As with all images shared with the world, responses ranged from reverent imitations to parodies.
26. NGASHA_180428_141.JPG: Silenus In addition to monumental marble sculptures, sixteenth-century artists were captivated by reliefs carved on the many ancient sarcophagi visible in the churches, public places, and private palaces of Rome. Printmakers in the circle of the renowned High Renaissance painter Raphael (1483 – 1520) produced engravings based on these objects, such as Agostino Veneziano's scene of revelry depicting Silenus, the drunken companion of the god of wine, Bacchus. Copied onto ceramics, ancient compositions reached new audiences, permeating the daily lives of refined patrons. The famous maiolica plate by Nicola da Urbino was part of a service made for Isabella d'Este, the learned marchioness of Mantua and one of the most sophisticated art collectors of her time.
27. NGASHA_180428_155.JPG: The Influence of Raphael Unlike his contemporary Michelangelo, Raphael (1483 – 1520) fully embraced the new medium of print. By collaborating with a team of printmakers, which included Marcantonio Raimondi and Marco Dente, Raphael oversaw the production of many engravings that spread the knowledge of his elegant designs, as well as his fame and influence. Indeed, prints after Raphael were by far the most important models for Italian ceramics. His designs for frescoes, tapestries, and prints appear on sixteenth-century plates, bowls, flasks, and wine-coolers with such frequency that some nineteenth-century collectors referred to maiolica painted with narrative scenes (istoriato) as "Raphael ware." While the works displayed in this room demonstrate the widespread and enduring influence of prints issuing from Raphael's workshop, they also highlight the pottery painters' sometimes ingenious approach to copying and repurposing. Some compositions were faithfully translated onto the surface of the plate, while others were altered, excerpted, reversed, or even combined with printed designs by other artists. The work of the talented maiolica painter Francesco Xanto Avelli (1486 /1487 – after 1542), in particular, is distinguished by a remarkably inventive cutting and pasting of figures to create new works of art.
28. NGASHA_180428_169.JPG: Minerva and Orpheus Not all maiolica painters engaged in creative elaborations of their models, instead often translating printed designs to ceramic surfaces with little or no modification. Such was the case with the plate depicting Minerva (goddess of wisdom and war) accepting the olive branch of peace from Cupid (god of love). An allegory of moderation, the design was based on a print by Marcantonio Raimondi, perhaps after a drawing by Raphael. The so-called "In Castel Durante" painter only slightly modified Marcantonio's engraving of a seated nude man by substituting his flute with a lira da braccio (a precursor of the violin) and placing him in a landscape that includes a rabbit and lion. The original design was thus transformed into a depiction of Orpheus, a musician and poet of Greek myth, whose sweet music was said to have enchanted animals, trees, and even rocks.
29. NGASHA_180428_171.JPG: Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael The Massacre of the Innocents, c 1511
30. NGASHA_180428_175.JPG: Francesco Xanto Avelli Charger with the Massacre of the Innocents, c 1527/1530
31. NGASHA_180428_178.JPG: Nicholas Beatrizet (?) after Marco Dente, after Baccio Bandinelli The Massacre of the Innocents, 1540s (?)
32. NGASHA_180428_183.JPG: The Massacre of the Innocents This superb large plate depicting the Gospel episode of the Massacre of the Innocents shows Francesco Xanto Avelli's inventiveness at its most successful. Xanto's main models for this istoriato work were the two most famous prints of the massacre at the time: one designed by Raphael, the other by Baccio Bandinelli. Seamlessly combining both figures and architectural elements from the two large engravings here exhibited, Xanto also added individual figures from at least three other engravings. The considerable size of the printed models must have also influenced the ambitious scale of the plate, which is one of Xanto's early masterpieces.
33. NGASHA_180428_192.JPG: Mercury and Psyche This vase is decorated on both sides with episodes from Apuleius's Golden Ass, an ancient Roman novel recounting the adventures of a certain Lucius. Obsessed with learning about magic, Lucius is transformed into a donkey and wanders at length, witnessing and hearing many incredible stories. One such tale is that of Cupid and Psyche, the subject of a famous cycle of frescoes designed by Raphael and published in prints by engravers in his workshop. For the scene on the front of this vase, the pottery painter copied Caraglio's engraving of the messenger god Mercury leading Psyche to Mount Olympus for her marriage to her beloved Cupid. For the scene on the back he combined figures from two other prints to illustrate a different episode from the novel. The nude man throwing a wine-skin is copied from The Massacre of the Innocents after Bandinelli, exhibited nearby.
34. NGASHA_180428_193.JPG: Paul Preaching in Athens As told in the Bible (Acts 17:16 – 32), Paul visited Athens where he preached against the worship of false idols. The subject was one of those depicted in a set of ten tapestries designed by Raphael in 1515 for the walls of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. The designs were engraved and published in Rome by Marcantonio Raimondi and Agostino Veneziano. Their prints functioned as the main source of knowledge about the tapestries, and only those five compositions that appeared in print were copied onto maiolica. While some craftsmen duplicated entire compositions on their plates, others placed the figures in new settings and used them to depict different subjects altogether. The painter of the maiolica plate depicting the ancient Roman hero Marcus Curtius pushed the two groups in Paul Preaching in Athens to the sides and inserted Marcus Curtius on horseback in the middle. He is shown about to plunge into a gaping chasm in the Roman forum that was caused by an earthquake. As efforts to fill the huge pit had failed, the priests announced that the gods demanded the sacrifice of a precious victim. Declaring that the courage of Roman soldiers was Rome's greatest treasure, Marcus Curtius leapt into the abyss.
35. NGASHA_180428_195.JPG: Workshop of Guido Durantino, probably by Orazio Fontana Plate with Paul Preaching in Athens, c 1535
36. NGASHA_180428_199.JPG: Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael Paul Preaching in Athens, c 1517-1520
37. NGASHA_180428_209.JPG: Agostino de' Musi, called Agostino Veneziano Isaac Blessing Jacob, 1524
38. NGASHA_180428_212.JPG: Amphiaraus and Eriphyle The prolific maiolica painter Francesco Xanto Avelli (1486/1487 – after 1542) repeatedly treated the story from Ovid's Metamorphosesof Amphiaraus, a Greek king who was persuaded by his wife, Eriphyle, to take part in a battle in which he knew he would die. Xanto's plate demonstrates his inventive cut-and-paste approach to composing his paintings, altering his printed sources to fit his needs. The figures on this plate were adapted from three different prints. Dressed in a blue garment, Eriphyle derives from a male figure seen from behind at the upper right of The Massacre of the Innocents; the young boy in Isaac Blessing Jacob is reversed and changed into the aged Amphiaraus; and the three soldiers to the left are modeled on three nude goddesses in The Contest between the Muses and the Pierides, exhibited in the next gallery.
39. NGASHA_180428_217.JPG: Marcantonio Raimondi after Baccio Bandinelli The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, c 1525
40. NGASHA_180428_225.JPG: Francesco Xanto Avelli Plate with Amphiaraus and Eriphyle (from the Hercules Service), 1532
41. NGASHA_180428_240.JPG: The Plague The so-called Morbetto ("little plague") belongs to a group of designs that Raphael conceived exclusively for publication in print. The macabre scene -- filled with the dying bodies of humans and animals -- depicts an episode from Virgil's Aeneid, in which Aeneas, leader of the plague-stricken Trojans, is warned in a dream to continue his fateful journey to Italy to fulfill his destiny and save his people. This plate, made in Urbino some twenty years after the publication of the print, is the only known derivation in maiolica, perhaps due to the engraving's disturbing imagery. Faithfully following his model, the maiolica painter also transcribed the Latin quotation that helped erudite viewers identify the subject of the composition. It reads in translation: "They relinquished sweet life and dragged their sick bodies" (The Aeneid, book III).
42. NGASHA_180428_246.JPG: Plate with Il Morbetto (The Plague) c 1535/1540
43. NGASHA_180428_250.JPG: Parmigianino, Rosso Fiorentino, and Caraglio After the sudden and premature death of Raphael in 1520, two young and extremely talented artists, Francesco Mazzola, called Parmigianino (1503 – 1540), and Giovanni Battista di Jacopo, known as Rosso Fiorentino (1494 – 1540), moved to Rome to study its artistic treasures, seek patronage, and advance their budding careers. They both followed Raphael's example by collaborating with printmakers to publish their designs, primarily with Gian Jacopo Caraglio (c. 1500 – 1565), who was evidently associated with Raphael's workshop. Parmigianino even made prints himself in the recently introduced technique of etching, something Raphael had never attempted. Crucially, only the works that Parmigianino and Rosso broadcast in print (as opposed to their paintings) were ever copied on maiolica, highlighting the vital role prints played in shaping the artists' public image. Other artists from Raphael's circle, such as his pupil Giulio Romano (1499 – 1546) and Baldassare Peruzzi (1481 – 1537), continued to collaborate with printmakers from Raphael's workshop into the 1520s. Together, the Roman prints produced in that decade contributed to spreading and popularizing an emergent style often referred to as mannerism. In general, mannerist artists rejected the rational balance, realism, and classical proportions of the previous generation in favor of elegant distortions, fanciful compositions, and an emphasis on artifice and the idiosyncrasies of personal style.
44. NGASHA_180428_252.JPG: Gian Jacopo Caraglio after Rosso Fiorentino The Contest between the Muses and the Pierides, c 1520-1539
45. NGASHA_180428_256.JPG: Probably Workshop of Orazio Fontana Plate with the Contest between the Muses and the Pierides, c 1540-1550
46. NGASHA_180428_260.JPG: Muses and Pierides Ovid's Metamorphoses relate the story of the contest between the muses (the daughters of Zeus, king of the gods) and the nine daughters of Pierus (king of Macedonia). Having haughtily challenged the goddesses to a musical contest, the Pierides predictably lost, and were transformed into birds as punishment. The tale provided the subject for Rosso's engraving, which depicts the goddesses at left and the daughters of Pierus at right. Filled with graceful nude bodies in a pastoral setting, this print is one of the largest Rosso produced with Caraglio. Its design became an extremely popular model for maiolica painters, especially in Urbino.
47. NGASHA_180428_265.JPG: Gian Jacopo Caraglio after Parmigianino The Adoration of the Shepherds, c 1526
48. NGASHA_180428_271.JPG: Gian Jacopo Caraglio The Adoration of the Shepherds, c 1526
49. NGASHA_180428_275.JPG: Gian Jacopo Caraglio after Parmigianino The Marriage of the Virgin, c 1526
50. NGASHA_180428_284.JPG: The Marriage of the Virgin Some painters, such as Francesco Xanto Avelli and his assistants, excerpted individual figures from prints after Parmigianino to create entirely new compositions. A witness to the event in The Marriage of the Virgin becomes, in the ceramic plate, a terrified man raising his arms in horror at the tragic deaths of Hero and Leander. The two lovers had lived on opposite sides of the Hellespont (a narrow waterway in northwestern Turkey) and each night Leander would swim across it to visit Hero in her tower. One stormy night he drowned, causing Hero to leap from her tower in despair. Her awkward pose, unconvincing as a falling body, is clearly indebted to that of a kneeling woman in an engraving by the Monogrammist FA.
51. NGASHA_180428_288.JPG: Giulio Romano and Baldassare Peruzzi Giulio Romano and Baldassare Peruzzi, two artists in Raphael's circle, also designed extremely successful prints inspired by classical antiquity. Talented maiolica painters, such as Francesco Xanto Avelli, could employ the same print to create very different compositions. For his plate depicting Vulcan, Venus, and Cupid, Xanto borrowed only the figures of Apollo and a muse from the corners of Peruzzi's print, while the female figure alone was included, now placed on a wheeled platform, in a separate, and obscure, allegorical composition. The Battle Scene after Giulio Romano was also a popular model for maiolica, being more or less completely transposed onto ceramics -- as in the striking dish by the Painter of the Coal Mine Service -- or drastically edited, using only a few figures, as in the plate by the Painter of the Three Graces, painted shortly after the publication of the print.
52. NGASHA_180428_323.JPG: Illustrated Bibles According to the book of Genesis, Joseph was given a "coat of many colors" by his father, Jacob. When Joseph's jealous brothers sold him into slavery, they presented Jacob with the robe, stained in animal blood, to convince him that his son had died. These two plates depicting the tale were made in two different workshops but are based on the very same woodcut, found in a popular illustrated Bible. Responding to the challenges of the Protestant Reformation, cheap, abridged, and illustrated Bibles became extremely successful publications in Catholic lands in the mid-1500s. In France, the Lyon publisher Jean de Tournes specialized in producing these pocket-size books, which he published in several languages and marketed throughout Europe. Under their influence, the decoration of maiolica shifted from mythological to biblical and religious subjects in the later sixteenth century.
53. NGASHA_180428_325.JPG: Italy and the North In the age of print, artists and craftsmen could respond to ideas and images produced in faraway places more easily than ever before. For the visual arts, the rapid diffusion of prints and illustrated books throughout Europe after 1450 led to the diminishing importance of traditional, local models in favor of a broader, often international outlook. Crossing distances as well as borders, printed books were from the very outset marketed to a wide audience, while printed images intensified and accelerated the already established artistic ties between Italy and northern Europe. For instance, Albrecht Dürer's technically astonishing prints were greatly admired and frequently copied in Italy. In turn, Italian prints and bronzes inspired by the art of classical antiquity shaped the development of northern artists, including Lucas Cranach and Dürer himself. The works in this gallery shed light on the cycle of influence enabled by single-sheet prints and illustrated books. Within a century, the groundbreaking and boundary-crossing technologies of print completely transformed the production and appearance of art on the continent, contributing to the emergence of a common European visual culture.
54. NGASHA_180428_329.JPG: Books and Plaquettes Several bronze plaquettes produced in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries appear to be inspired by illustrations found in books. The titillating subject of a satyr uncovering a sleeping nymph, reminiscent of Greek mythology, was popularized by an illustration to the allegorical romance Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (The Dream of Poliphilus), the story of a man dreaming of his search for his beloved. Often considered the most beautiful book of the Renaissance, it is famed for the clarity of its typography and for its refined woodcut illustrations of the people and places Poliphilus encountered in his dreams. The motif of the nymph and satyr frequently appeared on plaquettes such as those exhibited here. Produced in multiple examples and easy to transport, plaquettes spread their influence beyond their centers of production. In very rare instances, they even served as models for prints: the large woodcut by the German court artist Lucas Cranach expanded the design of a late fifteenth-century plaquette by the Italian bronzecaster known only by his initials, Master Io. F. F.
55. NGASHA_180428_332.JPG: Lucas Cranach the Elder The Death of Marcus Curtius, c 1506-1507
56. NGASHA_180428_345.JPG: The Neudörffer Plate This beautiful plate was part of an armorial service commissioned between 1552 and 1563 from an Italian workshop in Urbino by the German calligrapher, scholar, and mathematician Johann Neudörffer and his wife, Katharina Nathan. The decoration of the service is based on an etching by Hanns Lautensack depicting Neudörffer's arms, his Latin motto ("You have conquered Sparta, adorn her") in a cartouche, and his trademark, as well as his name and profession. The print, also clearly commissioned by the scholar, must have been sent from Nuremberg to Urbino along with instructions, providing a German visual model for the Italian pottery painter. Many wealthy families in southern Germany were particularly avid collectors of Italian maiolica, often demanding that sets of wares be personalized with their coats of arms or favorite decorative motifs.
57. NGASHA_180428_357.JPG: Seleucus Seleucus II was the ruler of the Seleucid empire, which emerged in the Middle East after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. This plate illustrates the sinking of Seleucus's fleet, seen at the time as divine retribution for having his stepmother and her young child put to death. As inscribed on the back of the plate, the talented painter Xanto followed an Italian translation of Justinus's History of the World, written in the second century AD. The ceramicist borrowed figures from both German and Italian sources. The fleeing Seleucus, on the left, is copied from an allegorical print of the sun by the German Master IB, while the dynamic male nudes are based on a now-lost series of erotic prints engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi and known as I Modi (The Ways).
58. NGASHA_180428_369.JPG: Ovid and Montagna Printmakers sometimes drew heavily from book illustrations when producing their own single-sheet prints, and few appear to have done so with more enthusiasm than the northern Italian engraver Benedetto Montagna. For his print depicting the musical contest between Apollo and Marsyas, which he prominently signed with his name, Montagna borrowed the two main figures from a woodcut he found in the first illustrated vernacular edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses, which recounts the tale and its gruesome conclusion. In punishment for his audacity in believing that he could be a better musician than the god Apollo, Marsyas was flayed alive.
59. NGASHA_180428_372.JPG: Dürer's Satyr Family In the years around 1500, the German engraver Albrecht Dürer -- who visited Italy in 1495 and again in 1505 -- produced a group of prints inspired by classical antiquity and contemporary Italian models. As his rapid preliminary drawing reveals, Dürer initially intended to depict a centaur family, the subject of an ancient painting described by the Greek writer Lucian. He later transformed it in his exquisite engraving to a satyr's family, a pastoral subject much in vogue in Venice at the time. Both figures also betray the influence of Andrea Mantegna's Battle of the Sea Gods (on view in room 1), a print Dürer had studied closely. Inspired by Italy, Dürer's print was in turn copied by Italian artists and printmakers, influencing bronze plaquettes, painted maiolica, and engravings produced in northern Italy.
60. NGASHA_180428_374.JPG: Benedetto Montagna Satyr Family, c 1512/1520
61. NGASHA_180428_385.JPG: Pseudo Antonio da Brescia Abundance and the Satyr (obverse), 1505 or after
62. NGASHA_180428_389.JPG: Dürer's Prodigal Son The biblical parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11 – 32) tells of a youth who wasted his inheritance on wild living and became so destitute that he envied even the pigs their food. Realizing his foolishness, he repented and returned to his father, who forgave him. Painted by an unknown artist, this plate is a masterpiece of Italian maiolica decoration and an iconic example of the influence of Albrecht Dürer's art in Italy. As the opposite orientation of the images suggests, the pottery painter did not own Dürer's original print, but a reversed copy of it, highlighting how Dürer's influence was often mediated by the many reproductions of his work that circulated during his lifetime. Despite being derived from a copy, the painter's aesthetic achievement is remarkable: the cool palette and meticulous painting are characteristic of the finest examples of early istoriato ware, with the metallic sheen of the luster adding to its vibrancy.
63. NGASHA_180428_391.JPG: Albrecht Durer The Prodigal Son, c 1496
64. NGASHA_180428_395.JPG: Workshop of Maestro Giorgio Andreoli Dish with the Prodigal Son, 1525
65. NGASHA_180428_403.JPG: Albrecht Durer The Centaur Family, 1505
66. NGASHA_180428_418.JPG: Albrecht Durer Satyr Family, 1505
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