Literature

It is not only for the classification of the collection, practically unaltered to this day, that we have reason to thank Rudolf Bernoulli (1880-1947), the curator of the collection from 1923 until 1947. He was the first to begin to publish important partial inventories of the collection - even though these consistently took the form only of lists. In the winter of 1925/26 he published Italienische Kupferstiche des 15. und beginnenden 16. Jahrhunderts, which was the first in a series of small fascicules. This important group was again to be the object of a research project and a publication by the Graphische Sammlung ETH in 1998.

Since the later seventeenth century the sources in the form of lists containing information about early collections of printing multiplied. Writings such as the collection catalogue of Michel de Marolles (1600-1681), which appeared in 1666 reflect the perception of and esteem for individual schools and engravers at the time. Although his collection contained almost exclusively printed sheets, De Marolles chose to base his classification on an earlier history of printing dependent on the history of painting. It is no coincidence that at the very beginning of his classification are to be found gathered together in an album the engravers after Raphael. He devoted monographically organized albums to Parmigianino and to Marcantonio Raimondi. The remaining early Italian sheets, also including those of Andrea Mantegna, were divided between several albums.

Since the time of Michel de Marolles our view of early Italian printing has become more sophisticated. The seventy-year period from 1460 to 1530 comprises very contrasting efforts and intentions. On the one hand during the fifteenth century aspects of the technical skill and the investigation of the new medium were to the fore. On the other, the artists involved in the artistic process from the concept to the execution found themselves increasingly confronted with questions of a theoretical nature, namely that of the disegno (drawing) and inventio (pictorial invention). Antonio Pollaiuolo was the first engraver to sign a copper engraving. But already at the time of Raphael a more sophisticated distinction was made based on the characteristic features of the work process and of the work division. Although Raphael himself probably never used the burin for one of his own engravings, he claimed as his own those of his pictorial inventions that appeared in the form of a sheet engraved and printed by another’s hand. Since the time of Marcantonio Raimondi the engravers designated as the Inventor the artist who had created the design which they rendered. There appeared simultaneously copper engravings in which the engraver has transposed his own designs and those which, as reproduction engravings, are devoted to the replication of the drafts, frescoes and paintings of other artists. With the introduction of etching technique into Italy by Francesco Parmigianino there began a form of expression akin to the light ductus of the pencil, which appealed to many sixteenth-century artists and established its position in the ranks of printing techniques.