European Prints and Drawings

Goya's Prints: The Dawn of Modern Art
November 28, 2009 – March 7, 2010

The Blanton possesses some thirty prints by Spanish master Francisco de Goya (1746 – 1828), with several impressions from each of his major series. They include great rarities, like El Embozado, which was left unfinished at his death, and a number of recent acquisitions, such as a brilliant proof impression from Los Proverbios. A chance to encounter Goya's singular genius, this exhibition presents these prints as a group for the first time at The Blanton.

Printmaking was not just one of Goya's principal activities. The subjects of his celebrated Caprichos were inspired by popular imagery, sayings, and concerns that had never before reached the level of high art. In the Tauromaquía, bullfights became a pretext for overturning traditional formal values, providing a touchstone for artists from Manet to Picasso. Refusing traditionally heroic imagery, the Disasters of War cast historical events in an unrelenting light that anticipates documentary photography. The late series of the Proverbios plumbed the imagination beyond rational limits, predicting aspects of later movements like Symbolism and Surrealism. In many ways, Goya's prints represent the dawn of modern art.

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes
Las rinde el sueño [Sleep Overcomes Them], plate 34 from Los Caprichos, 1797–1799
Etching and burnished aquatint
The Teaching Collection of Marvin Vexler, '48, 1989

Propaganda at Court: The Medici and Printmaking
November 28, 2009 – March 7, 2010

As the Dukes of Florence and later, the Grand Dukes of all of Tuscany, the Medici were the most powerful family in sixteenth-century Italy. In addition to their political authority, the family upheld a tradition of ambitious patronage of the visual arts. This exhibition examines the role that printmaking played in their steady rise to power. At the same time it charts the favorite court artist Baccio Bandinelli, along with designs engraved principally in Antwerp by his successor, Giorgio Vasari, and his circle. Etchings of major events, festivities, and everyday life at court by Jacques Callot and Stefano della Bella are also on view.

Cornelis Cort
The Practitioners of the Visual Arts, 1573, after Johannes Stradanus
Engraving, Le Blanc 150, New Hollstein 210 (Cort)
The Leo Steinberg Collection, 2002

A Paper Menagerie from the Dutch Republic
November 28, 2009 – March 7, 2010

Throughout history, animals in art have functioned as both religious symbols and secular allegory. In the seventeenth century, Dutch artists' preference for naturalism and Dutch society's scientific and economic interest in animal breeding, led to a re-evaluation of man's relationship to the natural world. As a result, Dutch artists used keen observation and sensitivity to render the animal kingdom with a new dignity and charm. Examples by Jan Saenredam, Hendrick Goltzius, and Paulus Potter, among others, provide a lively overview of this theme.

Paulus Potter
Le berger [The Shepherd], 1644
Etching, Bartsch 15
The Leo Steinberg Collection, 2002

Morceaux de Reception: Imprinting the Image of the French Academy
November 28 – March 7, 2010

To become a full member of the Académie Royale (French Academy) in the eighteenth century, printmakers were required to reproduce portrait paintings of academicians (Academy members). These morceaux de reception, or reception pieces, earned the printmakers admission to the Academy. More importantly, they elevated the status of the artist being copied and established the Academy's dominance over the production and consumption of art in France. The Blanton's extensive holdings of many of these prints allows for a substantive examination of this phenomenon.

Gérard Edelinck
Charles LeBrun, 1677, after Nicolas de Largillière
Engraving, Robert-Dumesnil 238
The Leo Steinberg Collection, 2002

The Chiaroscuro Woodcut
March 20 – August 1, 2010

The Italian word chiaroscuro means “light and dark”, and refers to a technique in painting in which tone and depth are created by a dramatic use of contrast. Applied to woodcut, the term describes a color print created with different colored blocks, ranging from pale ink to black ink. Such woodcuts were developed in the early sixteenth-century by masters like Ugo da Carpi principally as a means of reproducing drawings, and flourished with virtuoso artists like Parmigianino and Hendrick Goltzius. In the eighteenth century, the technique returned to the reproduction of Old Master drawings and paintings, while leading the way to the development of illustrated wallpaper. This exhibition chronicles the history and reveals the beauty of the technique.

John Baptist Jackson
Heroic Landscape with Dedication and Classical Ruins, 1744, after Marco Ricci
Chiaroscuro woodcut, under LeBlanc 21–25, only state
Jack S. Blanton Curatorial Endowment Fund, 2008

Picasso: A Graphic Inquiry
March 20 – August 1, 2010

Pablo Picasso's involvement with printmaking was a passionate and lifelong creative endeavor. His prolific output of prints underscored his development as an artist and revealed his seemingly limitless capacity for reinvention. This exhibition presents The Blanton's holdings of Picasso's prints, and highlights the artist's uncanny ability to explore and experiment with the medium's variety of techniques. Major works include the lithographic Head of a Woman (1925), four works from the celebrated Suite Vollard (1930–1937) including the Blind Minotaur Guided by a Young Girl in the Night, and Bust in Profile (1957), one of many images he created of his young wife Jacqueline Roque.

Pablo Picasso
Seated Girl, frontispiece to Recordant el Doctor Reventós, 1951
Engraving and drypoint, Bloch 1837, only state
The Leo Steinberg Collection, 2002

Piranesi Antiquarian
March 20 – August 1, 2010

Piranesi is best known as an etcher, in particular as a vedutista specializing in views of cityscapes and landscapes. An extraordinary polymath, he was trained as a stonemason, architect and hydraulics engineer, then prominent in stage design, interior design, restoration of antiques, and argument in favor of Roman antiquity. This exhibition presents Piranesi the antiquarian, archaeologist, and draftsman through his Antichità Romane, a collection of etchings that both record and interpret the monuments of ancient Rome.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Triumphal Bridge, plate XIII from Le Antichità Romane [Roman Antiquities], 1756
Etching, Focillon 348, Wilton-Ely 481
Gift of Alvin Romansky

Gardens of the French Monarchy
March 20 – August 1, 2010

Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France was ruled by the Bourbon dynasty which also established a highly controlled social order. Under their absolute authority, art and architecture flourished, and innumerable gardens were created for the royal family and aristocrats in its circle. The social and artistic significance of these projects is also reflected in the proliferation of prints that record their appearance and can still evoke their character. This exhibition presents choice examples by leading printmakers of the time, including Jacques Callot, Israël Silvestre, and Adam Perelle.

François-Antoine Aveline II
Garden Façade of Clagny
Etching
The Leo Steinberg Collection

Symbol and Science: Water Imagery, 1500-1700
March 20 – August 1, 2010

Water has always captured human imagination and inspired artists to visualize it in a multitude of ways. Whether drawn to its strange and supernatural qualities or adopting a more scientific approach, artists have been captivated by its inexorable power and shifting beauty. This exhibition explores the representation of water’s many guises and functions in early modern prints, from mythology and sacred tradition, to broader metaphor and allegory. Among the major examples are works by Albrecht Dürer, Marcantonio Raimondi, Claude Lorrain, and Stefano Della Bella.

Stefano Della Bella
Two Tritons Restraining Sea Creatures, plate 13 from Ornamenti di fregi e fogliami [Ornament with friezes and foliage], 17th century
Etching, DeVesme-Massar 999, fourth state of four
The Leo Steinberg Collection