print
- Museum number
- 1862,0712.502
- Description
-
The annual display of the Holy Shroud in Turin on 4 May. after 1593
Etching and woodcut printed on silk
- Production date
- 1593-1620
- Dimensions
-
Height: 426 millimetres
-
Width: 620 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Text from Michael Bury, 'The Print in Italy 1550-1620', BM, London 2001, cat.33)
This is a remarkable impression of Tempesta's print. It is printed on silk, apparently in two stages. A woodblock was used to lay a uniform layer of colour over the whole surface except where the two shapes of the body of Christ appear on the Holy Shroud. An etched plate was used for everything else. The order of printing cannot be determined with precision. In the case of a chiaroscuro woodcut, to which this relates in technique, the line block would have been printed after the tone block(s). That is the most probable order adopted here.
The combination of etching and woodblock is not new; Parmigianino had experimented with it in a print after Raphael's composition of the Healing at the Golden Gate. Veronika Birke described two impressions of Tempesta's print in the Albertina, in one of which the image of Christ is added from a wood-block (as here, and as described by Bartsch) and in the other added from a separate copper plate. Both of the Vienna examples are printed on paper. The image carries the privilege that Tempesta was granted on 13 October 1593. This was an open privilege, explicitly intended to cover all licensed works that he would invent or publish in the future (Leuschner, 1998, p.370, doc.6).
The shroud had been translated to Turin from Chambéry in 1578. Every year on 4 May it was ceremonially displayed outside the Royal Castle, when great crowds assembled to see it. This is the event recorded here.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
2001/2 Sep-Jan, BM, P&D, The Print in Italy 1550-1620, cat.33
2002 Feb-Mar, New York, Miriam & Ira D Wallach AG, The Print in Italy
2002/3 Sep-Jan, Ottawa, NG of Canada, The Print in Italy 1550-1620
2003 Feb-Apr, Edinburgh, NG of Scotland, The Print in Italy 1550-1620
- Acquisition date
- 1862
- Acquisition notes
- Almost certainly part of the group of '186 various prints' at the global price of £59 4s which had been 'selected from Dr Wellesley's sale' (ie the sale of Henry Wellesley's Italian prints on 29 June 1858 and 2 June 1860). This would cover all the Italian acquisitions in the range 1862,0712.439 to 607.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1862,0712.502
