Talk:Master L. Cz.

Aquatint?

(started at my talk)Johnbod (talk) 17:16, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Just a quick question: the Grove claims that Master LCz used aquatint in his prints, but this seems very dubious. I thought aquatint was a later invention...? Lithoderm 00:36, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Still digging on this, but it does seem odd, but not an isolated reference. Johnbod (talk) 14:23, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Unsolicited opinion: It must be an "aquatint-like effect" as he's at least 150-odd years too early (don't see it myself though - there's heavy cross-hatching in the Temptation) Yomangani^talk 14:53, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I'll copy & continue this at Talk:Master L. Cz.. Johnbod (talk) 17:07, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

So, the only mention of aquatint in Landau, David, and Parshall, Peter. The Renaissance Print, Yale, 1996, is p. 324, where a trial plate by Daniel Hopfer, who was certainly the important early etcher, is mentioned, citing the "classic study" by Gustav Pauli on the origins of etching (don't know it - in German?), who compared Hopfer's tonal etching technique with aquatint "even though it was made long before the recognised debut of the aquatint technique". However, they (Parshall in fact here) say Hopfer's technique "is not at all comparable to the technique of aquatint". More later. Johnbod (talk) 17:15, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

in Alan Shestack; Fifteenth century Engravings of Northern Europe; 1967, National Gallery of Art, Washington (Catalogue), LOC 67-29080, no. 125, he talks of "the variety & density of burin strokes" in the last engravings being "vigorously "painterly"". Anthony Griffiths in Prints and Printmaking, p. 92 , British Museum Press (in UK), 2nd edn [1], is interesting on "idiosyncratic but inconsequential" early experiments, mentioning Hopfer but not LCz. But I'm wondering if there is a more recent paper claiming he used aquatint. 87.194.52.251 (talk) 19:40, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Pauli wrote something on etchings in German and Netherlandish incunabula - possibly that is the one meant; I don't think it has ever been available in English and is probably out of print in German too. Yomangani^talk 23:53, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Re. Yomangani: I thought I could see it, especially say in the rock face directly above the goat in the upper right. Yes, there's cross-hatching, but there appears to be some sort of even gray underneath it. However, in other reproductions I look at (say, in Shestack's Master LCz and Master WB) it's not there so much. I'm almost inclined to think that at it's either a quality of that reproduction, or even plate tone specific to the Cincinnati impression... @Johnbod, I'm looking, but so far I haven't found any more recent papers. Lithoderm 19:41, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

On another note, is this his?: File:16th-century unknown painters - Christ before Pilate - WGA23785.jpg? Yomangani^talk 00:48, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Per the 1986 Abrams Berlin cat yes - updated. Johnbod (talk) 01:00, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Update: the most recent source in the Grove's bibliography is from 1978, so if there is a more recent study supporting the claim they certainly haven't read it... They also uncritically repeat the assertion that he could be Lucas Cranach the Elder: The L.Cz. signature (recently interpreted as L.Cm.) suggests that he might have been the painter Lorenz Katzheimer, though he was documented in Bamberg only in 1505 and 1510, or that the oeuvre might be the early work of Lucas Cranach the elder, who came from nearby Kronach. despite the fairly thorough demolishment of this claim by Shestack on both formal and historical grounds... Lithoderm 20:40, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Grove haven't entirely grasped the concept that you can update stuff on the internet, it seems to me, or they just don't have the budget, like their colleagues on the OED. Johnbod (talk) 22:07, 23 December 2011 (UTC)