Journée d’études : “More Than Meets the Page : Printing Text and Images in Italy, 1570s–1700s”.

Abraham Bosse, L’atelier du graveur au burin et à l’eau-forte, 1643
. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Type : journée d’études.
Date de la manifestation : 4 mars 2017.
Lieu : Warwick, university of Warwick.

For Italy, the ‘long seventeenth century’ was a period of considerable financial challenges. This was especially evident on the book market. Nevertheless, thanks to new techniques and formats that mutually related text and images within the same publication, innovative genres were born that were marketed towards both ends of the audience spectrum, from the learned to the illiterate.

More Than Meets the Page: Printing Text and Images in Italy, 1570s–1700s aims to investigate the ways in which the consolidation of the book and print trade influenced the development of such new book genres from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century. The new commercial items, moreover, contributed to the spread of cultural phenomena, for instance the Grand Tour through its souvenir prints that were sometimes incorporated in atlases. This one-day interdisciplinary conference seeks to examine these matters by focusing on the products, audiences, and professionals involved. By doing so, it sets out to lay the foundations for a shared history of printed products and markets in the early modern period. The conference promotes a multidisciplinary perspective, bridging the gaps between art history, history of the book, and other disciplines such as intellectual history and communication studies.

Programme

9.45 Registration and coffee.

10.10 Welcome and introduction.

10.20 Session 1: Understanding Techniques and Genres
Chair: Rosa Salzberg (University of Warwick)
• Angela McShane (RCA/V&A), Keynote Lecture.
• Liz Miller (V&A), Libri et Stampe in Rame’: A Bound Volume of Antonio Lafreri’s Architectural and Ornament Publications.
• Loretta Vandi (Scuola del libro, Urbino), Handy and Cheap: Giovanni Baleni Printer and Seller of Chap-books in Late Sixteenth-Century Florence and Lucca.
• Floriana Giallombardo (University of Palermo), The Venetian Musei by Paolo Boccone (1697): The Illustrated Natural Book and the Social Production of Natural Knowledge.

12.10 Lunch.

13.10 Session 2: Tracing Networks
Chair: Max Engammare (Institut de l’Historie de la Réformation, University of Geneva)
• Marika Keblusek (Leiden University), Keynote Lecture.
• Ingeborg van Vugt (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa/Amsterdam University), Books beyond Borders? The Circulation of Prohibited Books in the Epistolary Network of Antonio Magliabechi (1633–1714).
• Huub van der Linden (École Française de Rome/University College Roosevelt), The Private Exchange of Printed Ephemera between Bologna and Rome around 1700.
• Nina Lamal (University of St Andrews), Challenges and Opportunities: Printing and Marketing the First Italian Newspapers.

15.00 Tea and coffee.

15.30 Session 3: Evolving Markets and Audiences
Chair: Ingrid de Smet (University of Warwick)
• Julia Martins (The Warburg Institute), Illustrating Alchemical Recipes: Books of Secrets and the Case of I Secreti della Signora Isabella Cortese in Early Modern Italy.
• Domenico Ciccarello (University of Palermo), Baroque Imagery and Literary Genres in Sicily: An Overview across Print Books with Illustrations.
• Flavia Bruni (Sapienza University/University of St Andrews) ‘Becoming Peripheral: The Decline of the Italian Book Market in the Seventeenth Century’.

16.45 Roundtable and closing remarks.

17.15 Wine reception and buffet.