How do we remember the arts of the Italian Renaissance? Why have we become intimately familiar with the names and works of such creative figures as Raphael and Michelangelo? Since the late 1400s, the new medium of printmaking fundamentally changed the way artistic images multiplied and circulated in European society. Prints that copy famous paintings were repeatedly made, sold, and collected through the centuries. Yuefeng Wu, graduate student curator of Printed Renaissance, shows how the practice of print reproduction shaped and created the history of Renaissance painting in this opening lecture.

Free.

Image: Marco Dente, The Virgin Reading with the Infant Christ (detail), c. 1511–14, engraving. The Clark, bequest of Julius S Held, 2004.13.28