Picturing Venus in the Renaissance print

Renaissance art is defined by its engagement with the translation of artistic culture from Antiquity. If the forms and subjects of this relay of culture have preoccupied art historians since the foundation of the discipline, the technical means and methods of artistic transfer have been neglected. This book focuses on artistic relations between the Renaissance invention of printmaking and the discovery of what would become Europe's best-known antique sculptures, to retell the story of Renaissance art in terms of print's wide and rapid diffusion of antique sculpture's most celebrated forms. Developments in the art of printmaking in Renaissance Europe occurred during the same historical period as the discovery of what would become the most celebrated examples of antique statuary. Each new discovery of an ancient sculpture generated renewed interest, as artists converged on new finds in order to draw them, and subsequently to make prints after them. This publication, designed to accompany an exhibition of the same title, studies the art print as the visual means for the great transfer of culture from antiquity to the Renaissance. The research and the exhibition were funded by an AHRC award under the theme of 'Translating Cultures' (£106,717) as a study in medial translations between sculpture, painting, and print making. The exhibition concept was peer reviewed by the Hunterian Gallery's exhibitions committee.