Albrecht Dürer, sometimes spelled in English as Durer, was a German painter, printmaker, and theorist of the German Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Dürer established his reputation and influence across Europe in his twenties due to his high-quality woodcut prints. He was in contact with the major Italian artists of his time, including Raphael, Giovanni Bellini, Fra Luca Pacioli and Leonardo da Vinci, and from 1512 was patronized by Emperor Maximilian I.
Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed technique, rather than a photographic reproduction of a visual artwork which would be printed using an electronic machine ; however, there is some cross-over between traditional and digital printmaking, including risograph.
Hendrick Goltzius, or Hendrik, was a German-born Dutch printmaker, draftsman, and painter. He was the leading Dutch engraver of the early Baroque period, or Northern Mannerism, lauded for his sophisticated technique, technical mastership and "exuberance" of his compositions. According to A. Hyatt Mayor, Goltzius "was the last professional engraver who drew with the authority of a good painter and the last who invented many pictures for others to copy". In the middle of his life he also began to produce paintings.
Martin Schongauer, also known as Martin Schön or Hübsch Martin by his contemporaries, was an Alsatian engraver and painter. He was the most important printmaker north of the Alps before Albrecht Dürer, a younger artist who collected his work. Schongauer is the first German painter to be a significant engraver, although he seems to have had the family background and training in goldsmithing which was usual for early engravers.
Intaglio is the family of printing and printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface and the incised line or sunken area holds the ink. It is the direct opposite of a relief print where the parts of the matrix that make the image stand above the main surface.
Hans Burgkmair the Elder (1473–1531) was a German painter and woodcut printmaker.
Jan Mostaert was a Dutch Renaissance painter who is known mainly for his religious subjects and portraits. One of his most famous creations was the Landscape with an Episode from the Conquest of America.
An old master print is a work of art produced by a printing process within the Western tradition. The term remains current in the art trade, and there is no easy alternative in English to distinguish the works of "fine art" produced in printmaking from the vast range of decorative, utilitarian and popular prints that grew rapidly alongside the artistic print from the 15th century onwards. Fifteenth-century prints are sufficiently rare that they are classed as old master prints even if they are of crude or merely workmanlike artistic quality. A date of about 1830 is usually taken as marking the end of the period whose prints are covered by this term.
Israhel van Meckenem, also known as Israhel van Meckenem the Younger, was a German printmaker and goldsmith, perhaps of a Dutch family origin.
Erhard Reuwich was a Dutch artist, as a designer of woodcuts, and a printer, who came from Utrecht but then worked in Mainz. His dates and places of birth and death are unknown, but he was active in the 1480s.
Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen was a Northern Netherlandish designer of woodcuts and painter. He was one of the first important artists working in Amsterdam, at a time when it was a flourishing and beautiful provincial town.
The Master of the Virgo inter Virgines was an Early Netherlandish painter and designer of woodcuts active around Delft between 1483 and 1498. He is named for The Virgin and Child with Four Holy Virgins, an altarpiece of the Virgin with Saints Catherine, Cecilia, Ursula, and Barbara which formerly hung in the convent of Konigsveld, but which is now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. He was first distinguished individually in 1903; based upon the style of the altarpiece a considerable body of work has since been built up. The Master has been described as the most uncompromisingly "realist" of his contemporaries, and not at all concerned with elegance; he has also been called a forerunner of the Dutch school of painting.
Master L. Cz. was an anonymous late 15th-century German Renaissance printmaker. Only twelve engravings by his hand are extant, but their virtuosity establishes him as a talented artist whose work marks a stylistic transition between that of Martin Schongauer and Albrecht Dürer.
The Holy Family with the Dragonfly, also known as The Holy Family with the Mayfly, The Holy Family with the Locust, and The Holy Family with the Butterfly is an engraving by the German artist Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) from approximately 1495. It is quite small but full of intricate detail. A very popular image, copied by other printmakers within five years of creation, it is found in most major print room collections, including the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the UK Royal Collection.
The Master of the Lille Adoration, was an Early Netherlandish painter active in Antwerp, as one of the Antwerp Mannerists. He was first suggested as a distinct but unknown figure in 1995 in an article by Ellen Konowitz, a proposal which has been widely accepted. In 2014, Christie's gave his dates as "active Antwerp by c. 1523/35".
Master of the Figdor Deposition (1480–1500), was an Early Netherlandish painter.
The Master of Delft was a Dutch painter of the final period of Early Netherlandish painting, whose name is unknown. He may have been born around 1470. The notname was first used in 1913 by Max Jakob Friedländer, in describing the wings of a Triptych with the Virgin and Child with St Anne with the central panel by the Master of Frankfurt, which is now in Aachen. This has donor portraits of an identifiable family from Delft, that of the Burgomaster of Delft, Dirck Dircksz van Beest Heemskerck (1463–1545), with his wife and children.
Adoration of the Magi is an oil on panel painting from the early 1520s by the Dutch Renaissance artist Jan Mostaert in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, where in 2020 it was on display in room 0.1. The panel measures 51 cm × 36.5 cm, and the painted surface a little less at 48.5 cm × 34 cm. It is often called the Mostaert Amsterdam Adoration in art history, to distinguish it from the multitude of other paintings of the Adoration of the Magi.
In printmaking, surface tone, or surface-tone, is produced by deliberately or accidentally not wiping all the ink off the surface of the printing plate, so that parts of the image have a light tone from the film of ink left. Tone in printmaking meaning areas of continuous colour, as opposed to the linear marks made by an engraved or drawn line. The technique can be used with all the intaglio printmaking techniques, of which the most important are engraving, etching, drypoint, mezzotint and aquatint. It requires individual attention on the press before each impression is printed, and is mostly used by artists who print their own plates, such as Rembrandt, "the first master of this art", who made great use of it.
The Triptych with the Virgin and Child, Saints and Donors is a triptych depicting the Virgin Mary and Child Jesus, with several saints and an unidentified donor couple by the Master of Delft, created c. 1500-1510. It belongs to the Rijksmuseum, in Amsterdam, but is on long-term loan to the Museum Catharijneconvent, in Utrecht. The iconography of the central panel is unusual, and its meaning disputed.
