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9780754667629

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'... pursues the new directions in scholarship and generates an original, compelling, accessible, and thought-provoking contribution to the study of the visual world of the fifteenth century... the book contains some of the most satisfying art historical writing I have come across for a good while - clear, evocative, and firmly engaged with the images... deserves a wide audience.' Oxford Art Journal

Prize: Honorable Mention for the IFPDA Book Award, 2011 'Areford's compelling study restores to early prints, Italian as well as northern European, the urgency, vitality and interest that they commanded of their late medieval viewers. Learned, yet lively, his book breaks down barriers between high and low, and, most of all, for the modern viewer schooled to disregard popular printed imagery, between past and present ways of seeing.' Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Harvard University, USA 'This book is a major contribution to the study of European prints, meticulously bringing together many fascinating fifteenth-century examples to build a sustained discussion of their use in medieval and early modern religious life. Areford examines the hand embellishments - ranging from painting on colors to cutting out printed figures deemed extraneous - present in many of these prints, and links them to the devotional practices, visual habits, and communal concerns of their early viewers.' Lisa Pon, Southern Methodist University, USA 'This is a splendid book, copiously illustrated and clearly and engagingly argued. While medievalists will relish it, anyone with an interest in prints or religious art will learn a great deal from it.' The Art Newspaper '... important and thoroughly researched study...' Renaissance Quarterly '... pursues the new directions in scholarship and generates an original, compelling, accessible, and thought-provoking contribution to the study of the visual world of the fifteenth century... the book contains some of the most satisfying art historical writing I have come across for a good while - clear, evocative, and firmly engaged with the images... deserves a wide audience.' Oxford Art Journal '... [a] powerful and abundantly illustrated book... Areford's insistence on reinterpreting early printed images through the meticulous investigation of their viewers and contexts has produced a convincing and valuable contribution to the history of reception in visual culture.' American Historical Review 'David Areford's splendid book convincingly shows the vitality of [...] pre-Reformation block print culture... this is a valuable, fascinating, and highly readable volume, which definitely merits a positive reception.' Sixteenth Century Journal 'This richly illustrated book provides real insight into the techniques, the functions and the uses of fifteenth-century prints.' The Burlington Magazine 'Areford provides an intellectually stimulating understanding of late medieval piety ... The book provides a comprehensive analysis of the multiple functions of early prints in modern Europe, which reasserts the value of this corpus of primary evidence in historical scholarship. Areford's focus on the functions of early prints clearly indicates that this book is directed towards scholars of printmaking and the Renaissance. However, his emphasis on the monastic, hagiographical and iconographical functions of early prints means that historians of ecclesiastical history would also find this a valuable text.' Journal of the Printing Historical Society

Author Information

David S. Areford is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Massachusetts Boston, USA. He is coeditor of Excavating the Medieval Image and coauthor of Origins of European Printmaking: Fifteenth-Century Woodcuts and Their Public.

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