DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.67657#0051
Introduction.
xxxvii
tions on a much reduced scale of the greater part of all the prints
forming the collection. The reproductions which it contains were
prepared in order to accompany and illustrate the Catalogue pro-
jected, as above stated, in the years 1882-84, and afterwards
abandoned. They were not intended to give any idea of the
technical quality or beauty of the engravings, only to put before
the eye of the student their general design and composition and so
to save the necessity for long descriptions. They were executed
by the photo-lithographic process, in days when the processes of
mechanical reproduction in general were rudimentary in comparison
with what they have since become. Reproductions on the same
small scale and having the same intention could be made to-day
of vastly better quality. It would have been agreeable to accom-
pany with the present volume of text a volume of such improved
reproductions; but the old ones being still in store, it was thought
desirable to make use of them for what they were worth. Since
they were made, the classing and numbering of the originals have
been modified, so that the reference numbers on the face of these
reproductions no longer tally with the numbers in our Catalogue.
A key from the one set of numbers to the other has been, prefixed
to the volume, so that it is hoped they may nevertheless be of
some service to students wishing to have actually before their eyes
the design and composition of the prints described in the Catalogue.
It will be present to the minds of some readers that several of
the masters here treated, e.g. Dom. Campagnola, and
Jacopo de’ Barbari, were designers of woodcuts as well as engravers
on metal. Their woodcuts find no place in the following pages, but
will be described in a separate catalogue of Italian work in that
material.
Sidney Colvin.
xxxvii
tions on a much reduced scale of the greater part of all the prints
forming the collection. The reproductions which it contains were
prepared in order to accompany and illustrate the Catalogue pro-
jected, as above stated, in the years 1882-84, and afterwards
abandoned. They were not intended to give any idea of the
technical quality or beauty of the engravings, only to put before
the eye of the student their general design and composition and so
to save the necessity for long descriptions. They were executed
by the photo-lithographic process, in days when the processes of
mechanical reproduction in general were rudimentary in comparison
with what they have since become. Reproductions on the same
small scale and having the same intention could be made to-day
of vastly better quality. It would have been agreeable to accom-
pany with the present volume of text a volume of such improved
reproductions; but the old ones being still in store, it was thought
desirable to make use of them for what they were worth. Since
they were made, the classing and numbering of the originals have
been modified, so that the reference numbers on the face of these
reproductions no longer tally with the numbers in our Catalogue.
A key from the one set of numbers to the other has been, prefixed
to the volume, so that it is hoped they may nevertheless be of
some service to students wishing to have actually before their eyes
the design and composition of the prints described in the Catalogue.
It will be present to the minds of some readers that several of
the masters here treated, e.g. Dom. Campagnola, and
Jacopo de’ Barbari, were designers of woodcuts as well as engravers
on metal. Their woodcuts find no place in the following pages, but
will be described in a separate catalogue of Italian work in that
material.
Sidney Colvin.