Aldus Manutius and the World of Venetian Publishing

Art Libraries Journal, 1988

A reconsideration of the literary sources demonstrates that Giorgio Vasari’s characterization of the death in Naples of his friend Jan Steven van Calcar as an early one has been needlessly questioned. A spurious earlier birthdate of 1499 for Calcar was often used by medical historians to cast doubt on the reliability of Vasari who identified the northern artist as Vesalius’s illustrator. A later birthdate of c. 1515 for Calcar is proposed. The problematic descriptions by Vasari in the "Vite" of Calcar’s illustrations for Vesalius are also considered.

Early Venetian Printing Illustrated, 1895

"... present intention is to meet this want, by offering to the public a book which may serve as a pattern to the printer and as a document to the student; a book which may help to renew the beauty of typography by collecting by trustworthy methods of reproduction examples of the founts, ornaments and vignettes which adorned the most highly prized ancient books." A collection of facsimile illustrations of pages from early printed books, initials, borders, title-pages, printers' marks, art bindings, etc., with short introductions by Carlo Castellani (p. 9-[20]) on Venetian printing, printers' marks, water-marks and music printing; also a note on bindings (p. 217-218)

A 500th anniversary tribute to the greatest printer and publisher of them all

Renaissance Studies, 2019

Although the systematic study of Venetian drawing of the late sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century was initiated about ninety years ago, it remains incomplete. Certainly, much more is to be accomplished compared with the available research on Florence, Roman or Bolognese drawing of the same period. This shortfall accounts for a great deal given the widely held opinion-advocated in 1568 by the Florentine biographer Giorgio Vasari-that Venetian artists were born rather as painters and fine colourists than as draughtsmen, and so they scarcely worked on paper but from the outset used the canvas as their artistic medium. Fundamental research on Venetian drawing from the early Renaissance to later periods by Detlev von Halden, Hans and Erica Tietze-Conrat, Michelangelo Muraro, Nicola Ivanoff and Terisio Pignatti has refuted this viewpoint. Finally, recent exhibitions of the three giants of Venetian painting-Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese-their workshops and wider artistic context have accompanied or kick-started new studies of draughtsmanship conducted, for example, by scholars like

Folengo in America, ed. Massimo Scalabrini (Ravenna: Longo, 2012), pp. 153-195.

Studi di storia, 2020

A presentation of the 15cILLUSTRATION database and website, a searchable database of 15th-century printed illustrations developed by the 15cBOOKTRADE Project in collaboration with the Visual Geometry Group (VGG) at the Department of Engineering Science of the University of Oxford, is the first comprehensive and systematic tool to track and investigate the production, use, circulation, and copying of woodblocks, iconographic subjects, artistic styles, within 15th-century printed illustrated editions. The paper illustrates the potential of the 15cILLUSTRATION website as a research support tool for art historians, book historians, philologists and historians of visual and material culture.

Historical Journal, 2016

A B S T R A C T . This article analyses the relationship between imperial expansion and popular visual culture in late seventeenth-century Venice. It addresses the impact of the military on the marketplace of print and examines the cultural importance of commercial printmaking to the visualization of colonial motifs during the - war with the Ottoman Empire. Through a broad array of singlesheet engravings and illustrated books encompassing different visual typologies (e.g. maps, siege views, battle scenes, portraits of Venetian patricians, and representations of the Ottomans), the article re-examines key questions about the imperial dimensions of Venetian print culture and book history. In particular, it shows how warfare and colonial politics militarized the communication media, and highlights the manner in which prints engaged metropolitan viewers in the Republic's expansionist ventures. In so doing, the analysis demonstrates how the printing industry brought the visual spectacle of empire onto the centre stage of Venetian cultural life.