1610
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The Virgin and Child with Saints and a Donor (after a drawing by Girolamo da Treviso) is a 1610 by Andrea Andreani, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see Mary holding baby Jesus, surrounded by saints and a kneeling man in fancy clothes. The whole scene is printed in warm browns and ochres, like a sepia photo. This isn’t a painting—it’s a woodcut made from three carved blocks. The artist copied an earlier drawing meant for an altarpiece, so it’s like a shadow of a shadow. The technique, called chiaroscuro, uses light and dark to give flat paper a 3D feel. Look up chiaroscuro next—it’s how artists make depth with just ink.
This chiaroscuro woodcut was printed from three blocks in ochre and brown. It was likely based on a preliminary monochrome drawing for an altarpiece oil painting made by Girolamo da Treviso for the Boccaferri family chapel in the basilica of San Domenico in Bologna.
A notarial document of 1564 refers to the artist of the print, Alessandro Gandini, as a "matematico" (mathematician), suggesting that Gandini likely dabbled in printmaking as an amateur rather than a professional practitioner.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Andrea Andreani (1540–1623) was an Italian engraver on wood, who was among the first printmakers in Italy to use chiaroscuro, which required multiple colours.
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