Early Prints. The Print Collection of the Royal Library of Belgium

Van der Stock, Jan

ISBN 10: 187250129X / ISBN 13: 9781872501291

Published by Harvey Miller Publishers, 2002

About this Item

Size: 9.25"x12.5", As new, still in publisher's shrinkwrap.

Seller Inventory # 229304

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Early Prints. The Print Collection of the Royal Library of Belgium
• Publisher: Harvey Miller Publishers
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 187250129X
• ISBN 13: 9781872501291
• Binding: Hardcover
• Seller catalogs:
  • Art

About this title

Synopsis

The Print Room of the Royal Library of Belgium currently possesses roughly 700,000 independent prints, including a few hundred early woodcuts and engravings from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, which make up one of the most important parts of the collection. In the course of time, only a small portion of these has been recorded in a systematic catalogue. One-and-a-half centuries ago, in 1857, the head curator Louis Alvin catalogued the Library's noteworthy collection of Italian niello prints. Thirty-five years later, in 1892, Max Lehrs, then head of the Dresden Print Room, published the first and only inventory of the collection of fifteenth-century northern engravings in the Royal Library's Print Room. As for the two other parts of the collection included in this book, namely the early woodcuts and the early Italian prints, this is the very first time that each has been examined as a group. Consequently, the exceptionally rich collection of early prints in the Royal Library of Belgium has remained essentially unknown to many thus far. This catalogue is a first step in making the collection better known.