Our project takes an object-centred approach to both colour and coloured prints. The images we are interested in primarily encompass woodcuts and engravings from the late fifteenth and the whole sixteenth century. The majority of them are heraldic images – primarily state coats of arms, printed on the title pages of important, official documents – printers’ devices, ornamental frames, diagrams and tables which were also sometimes printed with the use of red ink. Illustrations and single-leaf images printed with the use of two or more woodblocks are much rarer and the most interesting research objects for us.

The most copious items in our corpus of studied objects are painted books. Among them are exquisitely executed illuminations of fifteenth- and early-sixteenth century prints, more standardized colourings executed with the use of stencils as well as amateurish, clumsy attempts to fill the black-and-white images with water colours.

We seek to classify different ‘styles’ of colouring according to the techniques, their functions, the colourists’ skills as well as their social and professional background, if possible to identify. In doing so, we will separate professionally illuminated printed pages from mass-produced stencil colourings or unskilled colouring of book illustrations. Likewise, we differentiate the colouring of religious images, which often had important devotional value, from colouring of other works such as for instance the scientific treatises, in which colour was often used to elucidate the meaning and increase the usefulness of botanical, zoological, astronomical or anatomical illustrations. The subjective selection of the most interesting objects will be presented and discussed in our blog entries.