The Block Museum of Art’s newest exhibit, “A Beautiful Line: Following the Early Modern Engraver, 1480–1650,” opens today.
The exhibit is designed to emphasize the beauty, history and intricate technique involved in engraving, said Burke Patten, the museum’s communications manager.
“This exhibition is a focus on the techniques and methods of engravings,” Patten said. “We have magnifying glasses, so you can see all the lines that go into engravings. It is very intricate, and it is easy to miss that this is a very painstaking process.”
The exhibit contains labels for each work about the artists and their objectives in creating the works to offer insight into the historical period, Senior Curator Debora Wood said.
There is also an interactive online component to the exhibit, which offers information about the history of the works and the engraving process.
Wood said engraving is an “intaglio process”-a form of printing in which the printing area is below the surface. To create the perfect lines seen in the exhibit pieces requires “intense pressure and manual skills,” she said. In engraving, the artist holds his or her drawing arm perfectly stiff and makes a design on the metal plate by placing the plate on a pillow and rotating it. The art form originated among metal workers who used engraving to decorate jewelry, armor and cups. In the 1430s, artists began filling their designs with ink and pressing them on paper. Then in the 1480s-when the first works in the exhibit were created-artists began signing and marketing these prints as artwork, Wood said.
The works in the exhibit come from a variety of sources, including the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and private collections, Wood said. The pieces are “exceedingly fragile,” so the exhibit will only be displayed at the Block Museum and the RISD Museum before the works are returned to their places of origin.
“It’s exciting from all standpoints,” Wood said. “There are stunning objects on view, and it is exceedingly rare to see these works in person.”
The exhibit will be on display at the Block Museum until June 20. [email protected]
