Displaying items by tag: engraving

Few media lend themselves to analysis of the meandering path an artist takes to arrive at a mystical “finished product.” Where can we find the abortive beard of a clean-shaven sculpture? What becomes of an empty field after its painter decides to dot it with sheep? Even the sketches that give birth to works are more blueprint than unfinished building; they can reveal intention, but the genealogical leap between plan and product can be fuzzy.

Etching and engraving, however, allow an artist to create unlimited prints from a single plate, and even to create prints at various times during the plate’s life. This process can provide a window into the evolution of a single plate and, in turn, of an artist’s vision.

A music professor has identified a new portrait of Leonardo da Vinci. The 500-year-old engraving, if verified, will be only the third known portrait of the Renaissance Master created during his lifetime.

The engraving was created by Marcantonio Raimondi in 1505, and has resided at the Cleveland Museum of Art since the 1930s, but the figure in in the 500-year-old image, which can be seen playing an instrument called the lira da braccio, was long thought to depict the Greek mythological figure of Orpheus, a prophet and musician.

Two treasured pieces of art — an etching by Rembrandt and an engraving by Albrecht Dürer — have gone missing from the Boston Public Library’s vaunted print collection, and investigators are probing whether the artwork was stolen through an inside job, the Herald has learned.

The library reported both pieces missing to police on April 29, after a BPL supervisor discovered they had gone missing on or around April 8, according to a police report obtained by the Herald.

Mario Buccellati was the first jeweler to introduce the technique of texture-engraving, such as rigato (parallel lines cut onto the surface of metal to obtain a sheen effect), ornato (based on the forms of animals, leaves, flowers), and telato (fine cross-hatched lines, imitating a fabric surface), which were used to make the metal look and feel as soft as silk, damask, tulle, lace, or linen.

Buccellati masterpieces created over the last 100 years are now on show at the Pitti Palace in Florence, in "The Treasures of the Buccellati Foundation" exhibition showcasing the creations of both the house’s founder and his son, Gianmaria Buccellati, including rings that resemble turbans, butterfly and panda brooches, and a “tulle” tiara studded with brilliant and rose-cut diamonds.

A zigzag engraving on a mussel's shell may transform scientific understanding of what has long been considered a defining human capacity: artistic creativity.

Until now, the earliest evidence of geometric art was dated from 70,000 to 100,000 years ago. Scratched into rocks found in South African caves, those engravings signified behavioral modernity: Homo sapiens' unique cognitive journey into a sophisticated world of abstraction and symbol.

But new analysis of an engraving excavated from a riverbank in Indonesia suggests that it's at least 430,000 years old—and that it wasn't made by humans, scientists announced Wednesday. At least it wasn't made by humans as most people think of them, meaning Homo sapiens.

A young woman hangs sheer white linens on a clothesline. A refulgent angel descends from the heavens while shepherds tend their flocks by night. And an early motion-picture camera captures the fairyland allure of a world’s fair, slowly panning its illuminated buildings.

These vastly different images — from a 19th-century painting, a 17th-century print and a 20th-century film — are among the treasures in the current exhibition at Vassar’s Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. What brings them together is “Mastering Light: From the Natural to the Artificial,” a quirky, thought-provoking show that divides its subject into three sometimes overlapping areas: interiors and exteriors illuminated by daylight; nighttime events made visible by moonlight or firelight; and scenes either lighted by or on the subject of artificial light.

When the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened its doors for the first time in Bentonville, Arkansas on November 11, 2011, the institution presented about 450 works of art, nearly half of its entire holdings. A little over a year later, the Crystal Bridges’ collection has ballooned and now includes over 2,000 artworks thanks to an active acquisition program led by Executive Director Don Bacigalupi, museum curators, and a solid leadership board. Within the past year, the Crystal Bridges Museum has acquired five sculptures, eight paintings, one mixed media work, 468 prints, and 504 works on paper, including photographs, drawings, and watercolors.

Museum officials were particularly excited to acquire a large painting by Abstract Expressionist artist, Mark Rothko, titled No. 210/No.2011 (Orange) (1960) and held an official unveiling back in October. The piece, which has only been exhibited twice in public, is currently part of the museum’s temporary exhibition, See the Light: The Luminist Tradition in American Art. After the show closes in late January, the Rothko work will be moved to the museum’s Twentieth-Century Art Gallery.

Other major acquisition include a portrait by American folk artist Ammi Phillips (1788-1865), titled Woman in Black Ruffled Dress (circa 1835); a neoclassical white marble sculpture completed in 1867 by William Wetmore Story (1819-1895); a contemporary mixed-media work from the early 1980s by Californian artist Miriam Schapiro (b. 1923); and a large painting titled Tobacco Sorters (1942-44) by the twentieth-century American artist, Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), which was commissioned by the American Tobacco Company.

A private collector who specialized in early twentieth-century works facilitated the major growth in the museum’s print department. The recent acquisitions vary in style from Benton’s Regionalism to Charles Sheeler’s (1883-1965) Precisionism and include drypoints, etchings, engravings, lithographs, screenprints, woodcuts, and wood engravings. A selection of recently acquired prints will be part of the temporary exhibition Art Under Pressure: Early Twentieth Century American Prints, which will be on view from December 21 through April 22, 2013.

Thirteen artisans gathered in New York on November 17, 1785, to establish the General Society of Mechanics & Tradesmen, a craftsmen’s mutual aid organization intended to assist brethren in need and promote the significance of manufacturing to the local economy. Less than a year later, when the group’s ranks had swelled three-fold, providing confidence and security for the society’s sense of purpose, a committee was formed to commission a membership certificate suitable to its mission. An early printing of this document survives in the Winterthur collection (Fig. 1) as a testament to the ambitious and civic-minded tradesmen who established the association.