Exhibitions: Unique collection of Renaissance woodcuts unveiled in Sverdlovsk Region

On January 20th 2012 the Museum-Exhibition and Information-Educational Center of Irbit State Museum of Fine Arts jointly with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Sverdlovsk Region, is opening a unique exhibition “Chiaroscuro. Color woodcuts of the European Renaissance”.

For the first time the exposition showcases 70 works by Lucas Cranach,  Hans Baldung Grien, Johannes Wechtlin, Ugo da Carpi, Nicola Vicentino and other prominent artists of German, Italian, Dutch and French schools of 16th century, who produced color woodcuts. The exhibition is a unique one, as most of the woodcut prints are great rarities, and even such museum giants as the State Hermitage and A. S. Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts do not possess many of the woodcuts which go on display within the exposition. “The collection had been built for many years and has never been shown before”, the museum’s director Valery Karpov highlights.

Chiaroscuro woodcut, which is one of the most difficult, spectacular and expressive printing techniques, was officially born in 1516, when a nobleman Ugo da Carpi turned to the Senate of the famous city of Venice with a petition claiming a privilege for the invented printing method of colored woodcuts known as “chiaro е scuro” (Italian) – “light and shade”.

“The highest level of the collection of chiaroscuro woodcut prints in the Irbit State Museum of Fine Arts enables to discover the development of technical side of color woodcut, its national features in the north and south of Europe, and also see in the chiaroscuro art the general evolution of painting, sculpture, drawing, theory of art, aesthetic ideals – the artistic culture as a whole”, reads the introductory article to the exhibition’s catalogue written by Andrei Gamlitsky - senior research fellow of the Research Institute of History and Theory of Fine Arts of the Russian Academy of Arts.