Description
John Ittmann (Editor), Cordula Grewe (Editorial Consultant)
From the 1770s through the 1840s, German, Austrian, and Swiss artists used the medium of printmaking to create works that synthesized poetry, literature, music, and the visual arts in new and captivating ways. Finding an eager audience in the growing number of educated middle-class collectors, printmakers experimented with modern technologies, such as lithography, and drew on the contemporary interest in regional folklore and traditional fairy tales to produce innovative compositions that both contributed to and reflected the dramatic cultural and political upheavals of the Romantic era.
Featuring the work of more than 120 artists, including Casper David Friedrich, Ludwig Emil Grimm, Joseph Anton Koch, Philipp Otto Runge, and Johann Gottfried Schadow, this authoritative book contains many unique and never-before-published examples of prints from the Philadelphia Museum of Art's unrivaled collection.
Editor's Choice:
I loved working on this book. It tells an engaging story, with beautiful and captivating images, about a fascinating place and time, when Europe had not yet settled into the countries we know today, when social and political changes could be swift and confusing, and when important innovations were taking place in the visual and literary culture. Prints were right there, in the thick of things, illustrating everything from political allegories and scenes from daily life to beloved fairy tales, revered religious images, mysterious woodlands, and episodes from Homer’s Iliad or Cervantes’ Don Quixote. The book doesn’t follow a single narrative line, so it’s easy to dip in and out depending on what you feel like exploring, while the authors’ enthusiasm brings their subjects to life. To quote a colleague: “This is a wonderful book; I’m so happy to be reading it.”
—Kathleen Krattenmaker, Editor, Publishing Department, Philadelphia Museum of Art
- Hardcover
- 424 pages
- 350 color illustrations
- 8" x 1" x 11 1/4"
- Yale University Press, 2017
- ISBN: 9780300197624
