Adam and Eve

King of Naples until he was ousted by Alfonso of Aragon in 1443, René d’Anjou held a high reputation as a painter. In his Cronaca rimata the Urbino court painter Giovanni Santi wrote that ‘in our time the aged King René / Painted better than many who are famous’, citing him as an example comparable with painters of high social status recorded in classical times. Another example is Baldassare d’Este, the Ferrarese painter and medallist, if he was indeed, like Duke Borso d’Este, an …

During the last quarter of the fifteenth century as the print began to claim some marginal prominence among the pictorial arts of Europe, printmakers gradually adopted the formal vocabulary of painters and sculptors. At the same time, they began to shed their anonymity as craftsmen. Although both woodcut and engraving aspired to the standards set by the ennobled arts, each printmaking technique did so by following its own path. On the one hand, the refinement of woodcut came about mainly through …