Print Publishing in Sixteenth-Century Rome: Growth and Expansion, Rivalry and Murder. By CHRISTOPHER L. C. E. WITCOMBE.

Abstract

In recent years the study of print publishing in Italy during the sixteenth century has taken a dramatic turn. Thanks to the groundbreaking work of scholars such as Michael Bury (The Print in Italy, 1550–1620, London, 2001) and Christopher Witcombe, the mechanisms and complexities of print publishing are better understood and reveal a highly competitive and organized commercial enterprise that capitalized on the development of printing techniques and an expanding international clientele. That prints were made in multiple impressions allowed for the same image to be seen by different people across Europe at the same time. The advantages of this are obvious and encouraged the rise of the ‘professional viewer’, many of whom became eager collectors. Rather than being marginal, prints are now considered key to understanding Renaissance and early modern art history. Witcombe's timely and welcome study provides a rigorous and fascinating account of print publishing in sixteenth-century Rome that is attentive both to detail and to the broader commercial structures driving its existence. It will provide the basis for further studies of the subject. The outcome of years of fruitful research, the author's findings are served well by the publisher through an elegant layout and copious and legible illustrations.