Printing Colour and Colouring Prints in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe: Comparative Perspectives
23–24 June 2022, Institute of Art History, University of Warsaw, Krakowskie Przedmieście 26/28, Building of the Faculty of Culture and Arts, room 108
First day
10:00 Opening of Conference and Welcome Speeches, Mariusz Smoliński (University of Warsaw), Karolina Mroziewicz (University of Warsaw)
10:30-11:30 Key-note lecture, Elizabeth Savage (University of London), The International Trade in Colour Printing, 1400–1600
11:30-12:00 Coffee Break
12:00-13:30 Printing Colour in the 15th and 16th Centuries / Moderator: Jolanta Talbierska (University of Warsaw Library)
Mayumi Ikeda (Keio University), Printing or not Printing Colour in the Early Mainz Presses
Marjolein Leesberg (independent scholar), Hendrick Goltzius’s Engagement with Colour and Chiaroscuro Woodcuts
Ad Stijnman (independent scholar), Innovation, Revival and Re-Invention: Early European Colour Printing Processes in Perspective
13:30-14:15 Lunch Break
14:15-15:15 Reception of Chiaroscuro Woodcuts / Moderator: Karolina Mroziewicz (University of Warsaw)
Julia Smith (University of Edinburgh), A Printing Paragone: Chiaroscuro Coloured Prints
Joanna Sikorska (National Museum in Warsaw), Under the Aegis of St George: A Cracow Echo of the Woodcut by Hans Burgkmair the Elder
Second day
10:00-11:00 Key-note lecture, Grażyna Jurkowlaniec (University of Warsaw), Colour and Identity in Sixteenth-Century Books
11:00-11:30 Coffee Break
11:30-13:00 Early Coloured Prints / Moderator: Ad Stijnman (independent scholar)
Zofia Herman (National Museum in Warsaw), The Use of Color in Late Medieval Single Leaf Woodcuts Showing the Virgin in the Robe of Wheat Ears
Dagmara Budzioch (Center for Jewish Art in Jerusalem), Handcrafted Additions to Hebrew Printed Books in the Incunabula Period
Małgorzata Łazicka (University of Warsaw), The Use of Colour in Early Printed Books in Cracow (1470-1520)
13:00-13:45 Lunch Break
13:45-15:15 Coloured Prints in the Late Sixteenth Century / Moderator: Grażyna Jurkowlaniec (University of Warsaw)
Małgorzata Biłozór-Salwa (University of Warsaw Library), Colours in Alchemy: Printed Editions of “Splendor Solis”
Simon Turner (independent scholar), The De Brys and the Album Amicorum
Magdalena Herman (University of Warsaw), Looking for Colour in the Late 16th-Century Print Collections
15:15-15:45 Coffee Break
15:45-16:45 Key-note lecture, Susan Dackerman (independent scholar), Painted Prints Reconsidered
16:45-17:30 Closing Remarks
All sessions will be streamed live. Registration form for the online and in-person participation in the conference is available until 19 June 2022.
CFP
Early prints were generally polychromatic. Most fifteenth-century woodcuts were coloured freehand or with the use of stencils. The text of the Gutenberg Bible (Mainz, c. 1452–1455) was printed in red and black. Several copies of this book were additionally richly illuminated (e.g. British Library, shelfmark C.9.d.3,4). Apart from monochrome or two-colour printed type, musical notations, initials, vignettes and printers’ devices, colour was applied mechanically to engraved paper instruments (as in Lazarus Beham’s Buch von der Astronomie, Cologne: Nicolaus Götz, c. 1476) or scientific illustrations (as in Johannes Regiomontanus’s Kalendarium, Augsburg: Erhard Ratdolt, 1485). Some printers, like Erhard Ratdolt, gained renown for their inventive colour printing techniques, others, like Nicolaus Götz, experimented with it only accidentally. Some innovations, like chiaroscuro woodcuts, had a broad and long-lasting reception; others, for instance so-called jigsaw-printing, were short-lived and used sporadically. The chronology and geography of colour printing, although studied since the turn of the nineteenth century, remains rather patchy. Even the much-studied phenomenon of the chiaroscuro woodcuts calls for further research on the range of their imitations and reception outside Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
The aim of the conference is to initiate more extensive comparative research on the phenomenon of colour printing and print colouring so that the significance of colour in prints, reflected by a variety of cultural, political, social, economic and confessional backgrounds, can be better understood. We hope to contextualize local experiments with colour printing and the role of colourists in the adaptation of prints to local needs and tastes. A transregional overview will enable us to gain an understanding of the mobility of printmakers and the role it played in the transfer of know-how as well as the mobility of the prints, which were often professionally or amateurishly coloured far from their original printing site. This approach also opens up the possibility of incorporating less studied regions into the ongoing, quickly developing studies on colour printing and print colouring, which so far have been focused mainly on the print production in Western and Central Europe.
We welcome proposals for papers that tackle such problems as for instance:
- The geography of colour printing and print colouring;
- Experiments with colour printing outside the main printing markets;
- Techniques of colour printing and the materials used in various parts of Europe;
- Transfer of know-how, the social networks and mobility of printers, publishers and form cutters;
- Organization of colour printing and print colouring along with the regulation of their production;
- Reception and consumption of colour and coloured prints as well as theoretical reflections on colour in prints in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries;
- Print colouring by amateurs, its ‘styles’, techniques and functions;
- Workshops of professional colourists and their relationship with printers and publishers;
- The interplay between printed and painted colour in the early printed page up to 1600.
We invite all early-stage and senior researchers of every discipline interested in various aspects of colour printing and print colouring in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to join us in Warsaw to share their expertise and discuss the potential of the comparative approach for this field of study. Please send proposals (of not more than 300 words) for 20-minute presentations in English along with a brief biography to conference organizers: Karolina Mroziewicz (karolina.mroziewicz@uw.edu.pl) and Małgorzata Łazicka (m.lazicka@uw.edu.pl) or directly to printsandcolours@uw.edu.pl by 30 November 2021. Notifications for acceptance will be issued by 20 December 2021. There will be no conference fee.
We plan to publish selected contributions in an English-language collected volume.