Old Master Prints of the 15^th and 16^th Centuries

Selections from the Art Museum Collection

February 2 – May 18, 2013

During the last quarter of the 15^th century, prints such as etchings, woodcuts and engravings gained some prominence among the pictorial arts as printmakers began to adopt the formal vocabulary of painters and sculptors.  At the same time, they began to shed their anonymity as craftsmen as they worked more independently, becoming Masters of their local artist’s guilds.  Many of these Masters, Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach among them, worked in other mediums, but it was their prints that created their international reputations.  Their works on paper could achieve a wider distribution than their paintings.  

Old Master Prints of the 15^th and 16^th Centuries: Selections from the Art Museum Collection focuses on the German Old Masters and their role in the evolution of European printmaking. 

Funded by UW Art Museum Gala Funds

Images:

Left: Lucas Cranach (German, 1472-1553), The Martyrdom of St. James the Greater, c. 1512, woodcut, 6-5/16 x 5 inches, Anna Hoyt Mavor Collection, University of Wyoming Art Museum Collection, 1973.9

Right: Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471-1528), The Resurrection, not dated, woodcut, 4-15/16 x 3-13/16 inches, University of Wyoming Art Museum Collection, 1983.149.2