To prepare for the in-class readings about prints of the Baroque period, as well as revisiting our knowledge of printmaking as a medium, we went to Colby’s Museum of Arts for this class session. We learnt about the foundational methods of printmaking as well as observing the results of what different techniques could achieve, including both relief and intaglio ones. By closely examining the artworks and seeing clearly the differences, albeit minor, between different ways of producing prints, and how these methods are then utilized to create works of art.
Surprisingly enough, it was not easy to distinguish between different intaglio techniques. While woodcuts have a sense of simplification within its depiction of figures and depictions of events, engravings allow its creator for a pleasant, realistic rendering of the world, through the use of cross-hatching lines and a wide range of lines’ weight. This is shown quite clearly in Hendrick Goltzius’ The Roman Heroes, wherein the value of the scene hinges on the believability of the depiction itself. One distinctive feature of engravings is the variability of weight within the same continuous line, as well as the clean curvature that wouldn’t have been possible for woodcuts, or most relief prints in general. Moving forward to the 17th century, we looked at works by Rembrandt van Rijn and his usage of etching and/ or drypoint. The slight shakiness of the line weight is apparent in etching prints, despite some artists trying to imitate the look of an engraving – like Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s Vedutta Della Bascilica, E Piazza Di S.Pietro in Vaticano. There are still ways in which these techniques can be limiting, especially in areas of large blocks of color. To deal with this, some artists settled with creating areas with tightly-crossed, close lines, while some developed and utilized a new technique, aquatint, which allows for variation of tones within these large areas of color.