Chiaroscuro: Renaissance Woodcuts from the Collections of Georg Baselitz and The Albertina, Vienna

Achim Gnann & David Ekserdjian 

Hardcover | 24.1 x 2.9 x 27.9 cm | 232 pp

Royal Academy of Arts | 2014 | 9781907533631

During the sixteenth century a revolutionary printing process was developed in Northern Europe, allowing artists to produce colour effects never before seen in printed media. The chiaroscuro woodcut added tonal blocks to the black line block to create the interplay of light and dark – chiaroscuro – the word that came to define the technique.

This beautiful volume brings together 120 masterpieces of the chiaroscuro woodcut technique, examining the fascinating history of the medium and showing its spread to Italy and the Netherlands, where artists produced even more painterly effects. Drawn from the collections of the painter Georg Baselitz and the Albertina Museum in Vienna, the book focuses especially on beautiful and rare prints, some of which are preserved only in a single copy, and includes masterpieces from Cranach, Burgkmair, Baldung Grien and Hans Wechtlin from the Dürer circle of artists, Albrecht Altdorfer, the Sienese artist Beccafumi and the undisputed Italian master of the genre, Ugo da Carpi.