Collecting Prints and Drawings in Europe, 1500-1750

Prints and drawings have been keenly collected in the West since at least the early 16th century. Relatively modest in price, they offered artists, amateurs and collectors of a systematic turn of mind the opportunity to put together collections with a wide representation of different hands, schools and types of subject. Prints and drawings are traditionally treated separately, but their collecting is shown here to raise many interrelated issues. Employing a wide range of methodologies, the essays in this volume offer a number of innovative investigations into the collecting, perception, classification and display of works on paper. Recurring themes include collecting as a statement about identity, and the role of a collection as a locus of social interaction, for the discussion of attribution, technique, subject matter and other historical, artistic and literary issues.