November 14, 2021–February 6, 2022
Renaissance Impressions, which includes 82 masterworks in varying techniques by artists as diverse as Albrecht Dürer and Hendrik Goltzius, explores the seminal role that prints played in shaping Renaissance visual culture throughout Europe. The exhibition offers a rich and comprehensive survey of the Golden Age of printmaking and reveals the vital impact of this new creative medium on art, education, and society. It was through the printed image that the myths and motifs of ancient Greece and Rome became widely known, and religious imagery was transmitted across geographical and cultural boundaries. Artistic innovation was also impelled by this new reproductive medium, which allowed the broad distribution of influential compositions by such towering figures as Lucas Cranach, Albrecht Dürer, Michelangelo, and Raphael. The exhibition features many of the era’s most extraordinary and influential prints, including examples in all graphic media from Europe’s major printmaking centers of Antwerp, Florence, Fontainebleau, Haarlem, Mantua, Paris, Prague, and Rome.
Works from MAG’s rich collection of Renaissance decorative arts, including armor, stained glass, ceramics, and textiles, are interspersed throughout the loan exhibition of prints. These works highlight the surprising interconnections between this new print medium and how artists in other media transmitted, transformed, and translated print imagery. This appropriation of the print medium by other artists and craftspeople created a shared visual vocabulary that crossed artistic media and geographical boundaries.
Printmaking has been called the “contemporary art” of the Renaissance. Throughout the 16th century and beyond, print images proliferated and the market for both religious and secular imagery flourished. This developing market led to the new profession of print publishers, who offered collectors diverse subjects from ancient myths to traditional Christian motifs. Compelling imagery, imaginative design, and technical virtuosity were the qualities most prized by 16th-century collectors; professional print publishers straddled the line between art and business, commissioning works from the best artists of the time.
Renaissance Impressions: A Guide to the Exhibition
Sunday, November 14 | 2 PM
Join us for the virtual opening lecture for Renaissance Impressions: Sixteenth-Century Master Prints from the Kirk Edward Long Collection! Bernard Barryte, an expert on this collection and author of the catalog, will discuss printmaking techniques and how the prints were marketed and prized by collectors. He will also discuss Mannerism, the imaginative style of art that was dominant in Europe during the 1500s, as well as the ways that these images can be interpreted.
Renaissance Sundays | 11 am-5 pm | INCLUDED WITH MUSEUM ADMISSION
November 14, 2021
December 5, 2021 (click for schedule)
January 9, 2022 (click for schedule)
February 6, 2022
Sonic Impressions: Concert & Talk
2 pm | Virtual | Watch the Webinar Recording | View the Performance With Best Quality
Let the Renaissance enchant you during our Renaissance Sundays each month, November through February, with live music in the Renaissance Impressions: Sixteenth-Century Master Prints from the Kirk Edward Long Collection exhibition, era-inspired arts & crafts, a special menu from Brown Hound Downtown, virtual and in-person presentations, and more. Brought to you by MAGsocial and MCC’s On the Edge Drama Troupe.
Mysteries and Mayhem: A Curator’s Tour of Renaissance Impressions
Thursday, November 18, 2021 | 6-7 pm
Thursday, February 3, 2022 | 6-7 pm | Tickets sold out! – POSTPONED TO FEBRUARY 6 | 3:30-4:30 pm
Join Curator Nancy Norwood as she discusses some of her favorite and most mysterious prints in the exhibition.
Renaissance Impressions: A Symposium
Friday, January 28, 2022 | 10 am – 4:30 pm EST | FREE | Register Here!
Sponsored by the University of Rochester Humanities Center, this symposium accompanies the exhibition Renaissance Impressions: Sixteenth-Century Master Prints from the Kirk Edward Long Collection now on view at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY. This virtual event brings together a tour of the exhibition and presentations from several distinguished scholars of print culture during the early modern era. View the symposium schedule here.
The symposium is free. Registration required.
In Rochester, the exhibition is made possible by the following:
shown: Hendrick Goltzius (after Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem) Ixion, 1588, Engraving; Aegidius Sadeler, Wisdom Conquers Ignorance, c. 1600, Engraving; Hendrik Goltzius, Apollo, 1588, Engraving.
