Thinking big: Monumental prints

Exhibit puts old masterworks in perspective

"The Triumphal Arch of Maximilian I" is one of the outsize prints that help "Grand Scale" live up to its name.

WELLESLEY - We tend to think of old-master prints as small because most of the ones that survive could fit into books or albums where they were sheltered from light and wear. But the great exhibition "Grand Scale: Monumental Prints in the Age of Durer and Titian" at Wellesley College's Davis Museum shows that beginning in the late 15th century, artists stretched the technical boundaries of woodcuts, engravings, and etchings with multipage prints that rival tapestries and easel paintings in size and drama.

You have to see them in person to really get it. In reproduction, Jacopo de' Barbari's 1500 bird's-eye "View of Venice" is a tight maze of buildings, ships, streets, and canals. But in the gallery, the vista opens up to about 9 feet wide. The point of view feels more godlike than birdlike in its all-seeing, all-knowing vision. You understand why the marvelous woodcut - assembled from six unprecedentedly large carved wooden plates printed on six unprecedentedly large sheets of paper - was one of the first images to be protected by what we now call copyright.

Such large-scale Renaissance prints are rarely seen or discussed because few remain. So the 48 prints, dating from 1486 to 1636, that curators Larry Silver of the University of Pennsylvania and Elizabeth Wyckoff of the Davis Museum have assembled in "Grand Scale" produce a rare sort of exhibition - one that rejiggers our sense of history.

They are clearly products of an era of artistic innovation and ambition in Western Europe, which included the development of linear perspective, oil painting, painting on canvas, paper making, printing, and moveable type. Wood-carving, goldsmithing, and armor-making techniques were adapted for printing. Increased travel sparked cross-pollination among what is now Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy, as well as among the West and the Middle and Far East (woodcuts and paper making originated in China).

Thirty of the prints here are woodcuts. It was generally a collaborative process in which artists created designs - sometimes sketching directly on wood printing blocks, sometimes sketching on something else, and the image was then transferred - that were translated into prints by master carvers. In engraving and etching, the lines carved into the metal plate are the lines that get printed. But making woodcuts requires indirect thinking, because the marks carved out of the wood planks don't print; the raised surfaces left behind do. The assertive but restrained lines that often distinguish woodcuts are a result of this focus on absences - plus brute force and chisels.

One of the most astonishing pieces here is "The Triumphal Arch of Maximilian I" (originally 1515, this one printed 1799). Emperor Maximilian, head of the Holy Roman Empire, commissioned it to distribute as gifts to lesser rulers around what is now Germany. Historian Johannes Stabius and court painter Jorg Kolderer are believed to have developed a painted design, and Albrecht Durer oversaw its translation into 192 woodcut blocks printed on numerous sheets of paper that produced a composite image more than 11 feet tall.

The arch design recalls the triumphal arches that Romans erected to celebrate military victories. It is densely and dazzlingly detailed with pictures and text - battles and marriages, busts of important personages, and a Habsburg family tree. But there's so much information, much of it too high and small to read, that conveying data doesn't seem to be the goal. Rather the print seems designed for overwhelming effect, an argument for the emperor's power.

In other works, long horizontal prints of parades celebrating a triumphant Julius Caesar evolve into printed processions of Christian history - Adam and Eve lead Moses, Noah, Jesus, and various saints. There are also architectural renderings, scenic panoramas, a wallpaper design, an astronomical chart, and accounts of European exploration. Explorations of perspective lead to optical jokes such as Erhard Schon's woodcut "What Do You See?" (c. 1531-34), which appears to be a jumble of sea serpents and sailors. But put your eye close to the bottom left corner, look across it, and the image becomes a pooping peasant. Not all the prints achieve this, uh, quality. Many works are energized by an endearing folksy awkwardness, but some are downright lousy - mushy, clumsy renderings and clotted, dull compositions.

Still, the best prints - like "Submersion of Pharaoh's Army in the Red Sea" (c. 1513-16), based on a Titian design - are radiant. The Israelites gather safely on shore at the right, while great waves sweep across the roughly 7-foot-wide scene, dashing the Egyptian army.

Woodcuts' complicated technique can sometimes make them seem, well, wooden. But here the lines become gestural, and as big, sinewy, and flowing as the sea's tempest.

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