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Prints of Marcantonio Raimondi's 16th-century work "Mars, Venus and Cupid" may have been made to deceive potential buyers.

Art Gallery exhibit explores mysterious prints

Four 16th-century prints that may have been doctored to increase their value to collectors are at the heart of a new exhibit opening on Tuesday, Dec. 14, at the Yale University Art Gallery.

"Changing Impressions: Marcantonio Raimondi and 16th-Century Print Connoisseurship" features 31 engravings from the early years of printmaking.

At the core of the show are four impressions of "Mars, Venus and Cupid" by Marcantonio Raimondi (ca. 1480-1527). These works, which are printed on parchment and dated 16 December, 1508, were all deliberately altered, according to Clay Dean, a graduate student in the history of art, who worked on the team that organized the exhibit.

After artists complete their first-impression prints of a particular work, they sometimes go on to make "second-state" impressions from a plate with changes or additions on it.

According to Dean, what makes these four pieces so unusual -- and the motivations of the printer so suspect -- is that the works are impressed on parchment. Not only was parchment more difficult to print on, it was more expensive to use than paper, which even then was the most common medium for making prints.

"I know of less than 10 impressions from 16th-century Italy that are on parchment, and four of them are these prints," Dean says. This would be as unusual as finding a modern book printed on metal, he notes. "We have the technology. We can do it, but it isn't done."

Dean believes the printmaker chose parchment to give the prints "a sense of opulence" in order to increase their purchase price. Furthermore, each of the impressions was also altered to make it look like a rare proof version either by masking part of the printing plate or by scraping the parchment to remove ink from the surface, he says.

While the four works could be the result of an odd experiment in printmaking, Dean notes, it is more likely that "these alterations were made to deceive potential buyers. ... That seems to be the only possible motivation. There's no intellectual or scholarly reason to do this."

However, the graduate student believes the deception is "not the sort of thing Marcantonio Raimondi would have been involved with." He suggests that the works might have been made by one of the printmaker's minions, perhaps using a discarded plate years after the original work was completed.

To illustrate the differences between the four altered versions and the original work, the exhibit includes a rare first-impression print of "Mars, Venus and Cupid" on loan from the British Museum in London.

In addition to these works, the exhibit examines in detail other masterworks by Raimondi as well as prints by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), employing ultra-violet and infra-red photography, x-rays, microscopic examination of surfaces and an analysis of both ink and parchment. The exhibit also addresses issues of print connoisseurship and matters of reception and collecting.

"Changing Impressions" is accompanied by a detailed illustrated catalogue with essays looking at the works from the fields of both science and art history. The project was organized, researched and presented by a team of scholars that was headed by Richard S. Field, curator of prints, drawings and photographs. In addition to Dean, other members of that team were Christopher Wood, professor of the history of art; Theresa Fairbanks, chief conservator at the Yale Center for British Art; and Lisa Pon, an independent scholar who recently received a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Dean will present a gallery talk on the exhibit at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 14; he will repeat the talk at noon on Thursday, Dec. 16. Field will present an Art à la Carte talk titled "Classicism and Connoisseurship in Marcantanio Raimondi's Judgment of Paris" at 12:20 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 12. Both events are free and open to the public.

The Yale University Art Gallery, located at 1111 Chapel St., is open to the public free of charge 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and 1-6 p.m. Sunday. It is closed Monday and major holidays. For taped general and program information, call (203) 432-0600 or check the gallery's website at www.yale.edu/artgallery.

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