Otto prints
The Otto prints are a group of small 15th-century engravings made in Florence in the Fine Manner style. Between 24 and slightly over 40 prints are usually included in the group, depending on the scholar. Most are only known in a single surviving impression (copy), despite many showing clear signs of wear and reworking of the plate. They are often rather tentatively attributed to Baccio Baldini or his workshop, and dated to c. 1465–80.[2] A few are "clearly by different hands" from the rest.[3]
Unusually, they are all circular or oval, and their mostly secular subjects often feature themes of love, romance and courtship.
Most of the group, 24 prints, were part of the collections of "the infamous spy and
Many of the prints have one or two blank shields or other spaces for heraldry; in some of the examples coats of arms have been added in ink, which was evidently the intention. Those with two spaces suggest they were related to a marriage. The space for heraldry suggests these prints, which must have been expensive, were intended for elite customers.[12] Several have elaborate "self-borders" of garlands and flowers in the latest Renaissance styles, suggesting that they may have been pasted to card and hung on a wall, and also possibly used as patterns by artisans in more permanent materials.[13]
Subjects
The typical subject matter includes pairs of lovers,
Both Judith and Phyllis were among the most common subjects in the Power of Women topos, showing famous women dominating or controlling men, and some of the Otto prints illustrate amor crudele or "the cruelty of Love", not entirely seriously.[17] At least three show handsome male figures tied to a tree and being abused or menaced by women; two of the males are winged, and so considered as rather grown-up Cupids.[18] The motif of the "chastisement" or torture of Cupid is found in various contexts in Italian art of the period; it is supposed to stand for the conquest of lust, but in these rather light-hearted images may represent the revenge of women who had suffered in love, as in the poetry of the Late Roman Ausonius.[19]
Other types of secular Italian Renaissance art designed for female tastes are the marriage caskets made by the Embriachi workshop and others, and the painted desco da parto or "birthing tray". Connections have been made between the iconography of the prints and the trays,[20] while the carved marriage caskets also often have blank shields for heraldry to be painted in.
Style
The Otto prints are leading exemplars of the "fine manner" in early Florentine engraving, distinguished from the "broad manner" initially by the width of the typical engraved line. The "fine manner" is associated with Baccio Baldini almost entirely on the word of Giorgio Vasari, who only arrived in Florence forty years after Baldini's death in 1487 (the date of his death is otherwise the only documentary information we have about Baldini).[22]
The prints are "characterized by rather sharp, often deeply incised outlines; similar deeply-cut graver work for the features, for the ample ornament of the costumes, and for the architecture; and extremely fine lines, organized into rather fuzzy cross-hatching, for the shading".[23]
The group
Although many were printed in probably several hundred impressions, requiring the plates to be reworked, most only survive in a single impression as "prints pasted on the outside of boxes have almost always disappeared".[25]
Le Peintre Graveur, the great catalogue of old master prints by Adam Bartsch, published between 1803 and 1821 in 21 volumes, catalogues in Volume XIII (pp. 142–151 in the Degen reprint), the 24 prints then in Otto's collection in Leipzig. Bartsch explains that he had personally only seen one of them, in another impression, which then as now is in the Albertina in Vienna, and he relied on information already published by another scholar, Michel Huber.[26]
The British Museum curator and print historian Arthur Mayger Hind expanded the number of "Otto prints" from the 24 Otto had owned to 42 in his Catalogue of Early Italian Engravings in the British Museum (1910), adding similar examples in other collections.[27] A small number of further additions have been made or claimed by later scholars.[28]
Provenance and collections
The prints first surfaced when Baron
A further print, of Tobias and the Angel, was given by Otto to Pietro Zani and later entered the British Museum in 1866 as BM 1866,1013.900.[30]
Some of the other prints were bought by the French
The example in the British Museum has the two shields inked in, one with the
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Pair of Lovers Dancing, with putti. BM 1852,0301.1, with another in the Louvre
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Busts of a couple, with dogs hunting. BM 1852,0424.5, with another in the Louvre
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Grotesque male face, BM 1852,0424.4, unique impression
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golden fleece(still alive) at bottom. Inked-in coat-of arms, BM 1852,0301.4, unique
Notes
- ^ BM 1852,0424.7 "The Cruelty of Love; a woman showing the heart just plucked from the chest of a young man who is bound to a tree"; Bayer, 92
- ^ Levinson, 15, later supported by Mark J. Zucker in his volume of The Illustrated Bartsch, see Schmidt, 162
- ^ Levinson, 15, note 5 (quoted); Randolph, 225; Christie's
- ^ Levinson, 15
- ^ Randolph, 224–225
- ^ Randolph, 224–225 (quoted)
- ^ Mayor, 89
- ^ BM 1852,0424.8, who say: "The Chastisement of Cupid; in the centre Cupid, blindfolded with arms behind his back, bound to a trunk and attacked by a group of four women with shears, a sword and a mace; the sleeves of one woman are inscribed: 'AMOR VUOL FE'"
- ^ Schmidt, 162
- ^ Levinson, 15; Mayor, 89
- ^ BM 1852,0424.1
- ^ Stermole, 75–77; Randolph, 224
- ^ The Frame blog
- ^ Randolph, 225
- ^ Judith and Holofernes, BM; the other is illustrated as Mayor, 89; see also Randolph's Chapter 6, especially p. 271
- ^ Christie's. This unique impression realized £12,500 at auction in 2009
- ^ Bayer, 91–92
- ^ Randolph, 227–238; two of the three are illustrated here, and the other at Randolph, 225 as Fig. 5:12. It is in the Albertina in Vienna.
- ^ Randolph, 227–238
- ^ Randolph, Chapter 6
- ^ Hind's translation of "AMOR VUOLFE EDOVE FENONNE AMOR NON PUO". BM 1852,1211.1; Bartsch, 1 – "perhaps Venus".
- ^ Levinson, 13
- ^ Levinson, 15
- ^ BM 1852 0301.6
- ^ Mayor, 89
- ^ Bartsch, 142
- ^ Randolph, 224, in 2002 still uses 42.
- ^ Schmidt, 162
- ^ BM "Acquisition notes"
- ^ BM 1866,1013.900
- ^ Swann Galleries, Sale 2381 – Lot 57; this was at the lower end of the estimated price range.
- ^ BM 1852,0424.3
- ^ Harvard Museums
References
- Bartsch, Adam, Le Peintre Graveur, Volume XIII, 1811, Degen, Vienna, pp. 142–151.
- Bayer, Andrea (ed.), Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, 2008, Exhibition catalogue (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, in 2008/09), Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, google books
- "BM", British Museum online database, by catalogue number
- Christie's, "Circle of Baccio Baldini, the Master of the Otto Prints (circa 1436–1487): Aristotle and Phyllis, surrounded by a Young Man and Woman with Eros, and a reclining nude Woman with two Children (Hind A.I.26; Bartsch 29)", Lot 1, Live Auction 7781, Old Master Prints, 8 December 2009.
- Levinson, Jay A. (ed. – entries by Konrad Oberhuber) Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington (Catalogue), 1973, LOC 7379624
- ISBN 0691003262
- Randolph, Adrian W. B., Engaging Symbols: gender, politics, and public art in fifteenth-century Florence, 2002, Yale University Press, ISBN 9780300092127, google books
- Schmidt, Suzanne Karr. “A New Otto Print.” Print Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 2, 2008, pp. 162–66, JSTOR
- Stermole, Krystina Karen, Sex Role Reversal Imagery in Fifteenth-century Italy, 2000, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario (MA thesis)