Prints from Then till Now (FA 106X)


Marjorie B. (Jerry) Cohn

Office: Fogg Museum, Mongan Center (at left side of courtyard, 1st floor)
Office hours: Wednesday, 2-5, and any other weekday or Saturday a.m. by appointment
Phone: 5-2393 (work); 646-6192 (home; not after 9:30 p.m.!)
e-mail: cohn@fas.harvard.edu
WWW: www.fas.harvard.edu/~cohn

Paper assignment (5-10 pp., due March 16)

The following two prints will be available for your study in the Mongan Center during open hours, Tues.-Fri., 2-4:45, and Sat., 10-12:45. NOTE: neither the scanned images below nor the photocopies attached to the hard-copy assignment sheets will be sufficient for you to respond satisfactorily to the the assignment. It will be difficult for all of you to study the originals simultaneously. Please DO NOT leave this assignment till the last minute.

These two prints depict comparable subjects: the retrieval of persons from death by Christ. Without going into the art history of the two images (that is, the difference between the German and Dutch schools and stylistic development between 1510 and 1630), please compare the prints' exploitation of their material resources in a consideration of their visual and commercial effectiveness. You should extend your discussion to an analysis of these impressions' place within the printing history of their matrices; I have included the appropriate catalogue information in the hand-out. Prints for Comparison

Albrecht Durer
German, 1471-1528
Christ in Limbo, from
Large Woodcut Passion, 1510
Woodcut, proof before the 1511 edition
Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, M10314


Jan Lievens
Dutch, 1607-1674
The Raising of Lazarus,1630
Etching, first state of three
Purchased through the generosity of
Ruth V. S. Lauer, in memory of her father
Joseph Bishop Van Sciver (1861-1943), M23681