Niello-prints

In 'The Renaissance Print', David Landau and Peter Parshall emphasized the necessity of a direct approach to the object and its materiality, attention to printmaking techniques, and the print’s relationship with other arts. Keeping these aspects in mind, I will focus on early printmaking in Lombardy, a region often overlooked in the history of Renaissance printmaking. In Milan in 1481, the goldsmith Bernardo Prevedari produced a large architectural engraving that became a “record breaker” in many ways. Building upon the documentary evidence relating to its making, I will address the role goldsmiths played in prints’ production in this period, and focus especially on the issue of nielli. Furthermore, the London impression of the engraving is pricked, providing important evidence of its use as a model sheet. The study of Prevedari’s print will therefore act as a case study, from which a vivid portrayal of early printmaking in Lombardy will emerge.

Da decenni dispersi in più musei, dalla National Gallery of Art di Washington al Castello Sforzesco, i nielli appartenuti alla famiglia Trivulzio - che ancora una volta viene celebrata per il suo gusto raffinato e l'instancabile ricerca di oggetti inusuali - sono qui ‘riuniti’ e studiati in relazione l’uno con l’altro. Attraverso il loro ‘caso’, il volume offre un contributo fondamentale per la storia della produzione dei nielli e della loro fortuna collezionistica nel Sette e Ottocento.
Attraverso le testimonianze di coloro che ne compresero l'interesse nei secoli passati, sono indagati in dettaglio non solo la creazione di queste opere così rare, ma anche la loro importanza storiografica e il legame con le origini dell’incisione, aspetti museografici, di catalogazione e organizzazione nelle raccolte d’arte, fino a toccare il problema delle falsificazioni.
La maggior parte delle lastrine qui discusse sono oggi conservate presso la National Gallery of Art di Washington, parte di un nucleo di opere realizzate in vari media che Samuel H. Kress acquisì, tramite Alessandro Contini Bonacossi dalla collezione Trivulzio negli anni trenta del Novecento.

The research originates from a deep interest for Lombard Renaissance engraving, which occupies a position of clear – also historical – inferiority to the results obtained in other cities such as Florence, Venice and Bologna. Nonetheless, it was this particular context that produced a masterpiece such as the Prevedari Print (1481), our considerations on which link its technical and iconographic singularity to its remarkable fortune as a figural source in Italy and in Europe. On the basis of Vasari's theory, and with the intention of clarifying the cultural and artistic milieu within which the author of the Prevedari, as well as the other engravers, worked, we engaged a territory never previously attempted: the production of niello-plates in Lombardy. We studied and classified pieces of goldsmiths’ work still in their original location, and then the severed niello-plates preserved in museums. We also attempted a reconstruction of the cultural milieu where such an interest developed, addressing both specific literature and collections. The most important finding were the niello-plates from the Trivulzio collection which constitutes one of the foremost group of such works in the world.

4 schede su Leopoldo Cicognara, Memorie…(Prato 1831), e 3 nielli anonimi conservati a Pavia (Musei Civici), Romano di Lombardia e Madrid (Museo Lázaro Galdiano), in Oreficeria e arti suntuarie tra Visconti e Sforza, cat. della mostra a cura di P. VENTURELLI (Milano, Museo Diocesano, 30 settembre – 30 dicembre 2011), Milano 2011, pp. 206-215 nn. 43-46