“Art of Enterprise” explores the business of printmaking in the late 15th-century. The exhibition will be the first in the United States to present new research about the role Israhel van Meckenem (German, 1440/1445-1503) played in developing printmaking as a fine art and will feature more than 60 objects that place his important engravings alongside images he copied from his contemporaries, including Master ES, Martin Schongauer and Albrecht Dürer.
The exhibition will include engravings “Saint Peter” and “Saint John” that were unknown to print historians until recently and are new to the Chazen’s permanent collection. Joined by “Saint Judas Thaddeus” from the same series of apostles likely produced around 1470, they will appear alongside source material by Master ES on loan from The Albertina Museum in Vienna. Placing the works together will encourage close looking as visitors discover slight differences between Israhel’s depictions and Master ES’s work.
In contrast to the 21st-century practice of putting prints in frames for display, many of Israhel’s works were distributed throughout Europe and used in manuscripts, often of devotional nature. “Album with Twelve Engravings of The Passion, a Woodcut of Christ as the Man of Sorrows, and a Metalcut of St. Jerome in Penitence,” on loan to the Chazen from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, presents an example of Israhel’s Passion series in a bound prayerbook.
Mon - Fri 10am - 7pm
Sat & Sun 11am - 5pm
Always Free
Chazen Musein of Art
University of Wisconsin
750 University Avenue
Madison, WI
43.073649914847, -89.3989253
Art of Enterprise: Israhel van Meckenem's 15th-Century Print Workshop
