In the Library: Jost Amman and Sixteenth-Century Woodcut Illustration
September 5, 2017 – January 5, 2018
East Building, Study Center Library
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Jost Amman, Der Formschneider, 1568, woodcut in Hartmann Schopper (born 1542), Panoplia omnium illiberalium mechanicarum aut sedentariarum artium genera continens, Frankfurt: Georg Corin and Sigmund Feyerabend, David K. E. Bruce Fund
This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.
Amman may have trained in the workshop of
Little is known of Amman’s working methods beyond an anecdote from one of his pupils attesting to the master’s prolific work as a draftsman. Although Amman’s drawings were also printed via copperplate etchings and engravings, his woodcut illustrations were especially popular. This exhibition focuses on Amman’s woodcuts, presenting them alongside those of his predecessors such as Solis,
The books presented in this exhibition show a form of illustration at its apogee in the late Renaissance, although it would decline in the seventeenth century as the baroque took hold. Etching and engraving became most publishers’ media of choice for all but the most basic book illustrations. Shown alongside other examples of sixteenth-century woodcut illustrations, the exhibition aims to elucidate Amman’s particular combination of precise simplicity with fanciful imagination to produce economical woodcuts that serve books with a wide variety of purposes. During his career Amman completed hundreds of designs for dozens of book commissions, from bibles to classics, history to literature, costumes to emblems. Despite enjoying respect among his contemporaries, the quality of Amman’s work was criticized after his death in 1591. Yet his prints continued to be copied and re-used, becoming pattern books that influenced artists such as
Organization: Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Brochure: In the Library Jost Amman and Sixteenth-Century Woodcut Illustration by Yuri Long. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2017.
- Amman, Jost
- Swiss, 1539 - 1591
- Dürer, Albrecht
- German, 1471 - 1528
- Beham, Sebald
- German, 1500 - 1550
- Solis, Virgil
- German, 1514 - 1562
- Stimmer, Tobias
- Swiss, 1539 - 1584
- Weiditz, II, Hans
- German, 1500 - 1536
- Albrecht Dürer
- The Apocalypse of Saint John
- 1498
- Jost Amman
- Biblia (Bible)
- 1570
- Henri Estienne (author) and Jost Amman
- Anthologia gnomica
- published 1579
- Sebald Beham
- Typi in Apocalypsi Ioannis depicti ut clarius vaticinia Ioannis intellegi possint (Illustrations for the Apocalypsis)
- 1539
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (author), Hans Weiditz, II, Hans Burgkmair I
- Officia M.T.C.
- 1531
- Francesco Petrarch (author) and Hans Weiditz, II (artist)
- Von der Artzney bayder Glück (De Remediis Utriusque Fortuna) (On the Remedies of Good and Evil Fortune)
- 1532
- German 16th Century, George Rüxner (author)
- Thurnierbuch (Tournament Book)
- 1530