Lilian Armstrong - Böcker

The combination of the woodcut-a print method devised early in the fifteenth century-with Johannes Gutenberg's revolutionary invention of printing with moveable type resulted in a powerful explosion of information and ideas. For the first time, it was possible to use a mechanised system to print identical copies of books containing both text and images. Featured in The Heavenly Craft are the earliest surviving examples of these books from throughout Western Europe, all printed within the first century after Gutenberg's invention. The contributors bring these rare books to life, exploring the evolution of the technique, composition, and colouration of the woodcut beginning with the earliest publications. Many of the woodcut designs grew out of the manuscript illumination, in which book illustrations were painstakingly executed by hand. The authors also present the distinguishing features of national style and taste, treating the reader to examples from Germany, Italy, France, Spain, and the Netherlands. In addition, The Heavenly Craft describes the provenance of these volumes, providing an account of how Lessing J.Rosenwald purchased them from heir to the Lea and Perrins fortune and later donated them to the Library of Congress. These early printed volumes are the predecessors of today's illustrated books. The Heavenly Craft celebrates these origins, making these early publications available to bibliophiles and print lovers.

Lilian Armstrong is Professor of Art at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, and a specialist on Venetian Renaissance book illumination. She is the author of The Paintings and Drawings of Marco Zoppo and Renaissance Miniature Painters and Classical Imagery: The Master of the Putti and His Venetian Workshop, and she was a major contributor to the exhibition catalogue The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumination 1450-1550 (ed. by Jonathan Alexander). Her publications have focussed particularly on the transition from illuminated manuscripts to the hand-illuminated early printed book in Venice. The present volume collects Professor Armstrong's papers on miniaturists active in Venice and Northern Italy in the 15th and early 16th centuries, and on the impact of the new invention of printing on these artists and their patrons. Included are papers on Marco Zoppo, primarily a monumental"painter, who nevertheless also painted in manuscripts and incunables. The studies variously identify miniaturists and designers of woodcuts through stylistic groupings, trace iconographic traditions for Pliny's Natural History and Petrarch's De viris illustribus, demonstrate the importance of heraldry for studying patronage of Venetian printed books, and explore the distribution of Venetian incunables throughout Europe based on analysis of their decoration.

Lilian Armstrong is Professor of Art at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, and a specialist on Venetian Renaissance book illumination. She is the author of The Paintings and Drawings of Marco Zoppo and Renaissance Miniature Painters and Classical Imagery: The Master of the Putti and His Venetian Workshop, and she was a major contributor to the exhibition catalogue The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumination 1450-1550 (ed. by Jonathan Alexander). Her publications have focussed particularly on the transition from illuminated manuscripts to the hand-illuminated early printed book in Venice. The present volume collects Professor Armstrong's papers on miniaturists active in Venice and Northern Italy in the 15th and early 16th centuries, and on the impact of the new invention of printing on these artists and their patrons. Included are papers on Marco Zoppo, primarily a monumental"painter, who nevertheless also painted in manuscripts and incunables. The studies variously identify miniaturists and designers of woodcuts through stylistic groupings, trace iconographic traditions for Pliny's Natural History and Petrarch's De viris illustribus, demonstrate the importance of heraldry for studying patronage of Venetian printed books, and explore the distribution of Venetian incunables throughout Europe based on analysis of their decoration.

Lilian Armstrong is Professor of Art at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, and a specialist on Venetian Renaissance book illumination. She is the author of The Paintings and Drawings of Marco Zoppo and Renaissance Miniature Painters and Classical Imagery: The Master of the Putti and His Venetian Workshop, and she was a major contributor to the exhibition catalogue The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumination 1450-1550 (ed. by Jonathan Alexander). Her publications have focussed particularly on the transition from illuminated manuscripts to the hand-illuminated early printed book in Venice. The present volume collects Professor Armstrong's papers on miniaturists active in Venice and Northern Italy in the 15th and early 16th centuries, and on the impact of the new invention of printing on these artists and their patrons. Included are papers on Marco Zoppo, primarily a monumental"painter, who nevertheless also painted in manuscripts and incunables. The studies variously identify miniaturists and designers of woodcuts through stylistic groupings, trace iconographic traditions for Pliny's Natural History and Petrarch's De viris illustribus, demonstrate the importance of heraldry for studying patronage of Venetian printed books, and explore the distribution of Venetian incunables throughout Europe based on analysis of their decoration.

Lilian Armstrong is Professor of Art at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, and a specialist on Venetian Renaissance book illumination. She is the author of The Paintings and Drawings of Marco Zoppo and Renaissance Miniature Painters and Classical Imagery: The Master of the Putti and His Venetian Workshop, and she was a major contributor to the exhibition catalogue The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumination 1450-1550 (ed. by Jonathan Alexander). Her publications have focussed particularly on the transition from illuminated manuscripts to the hand-illuminated early printed book in Venice. The present volume collects Professor Armstrong's papers on miniaturists active in Venice and Northern Italy in the 15th and early 16th centuries, and on the impact of the new invention of printing on these artists and their patrons. Included are papers on Marco Zoppo, primarily a monumental"painter, who nevertheless also painted in manuscripts and incunables. The studies variously identify miniaturists and designers of woodcuts through stylistic groupings, trace iconographic traditions for Pliny's Natural History and Petrarch's De viris illustribus, demonstrate the importance of heraldry for studying patronage of Venetian printed books, and explore the distribution of Venetian incunables throughout Europe based on analysis of their decoration.