Abstract

The fifteenth century embraced reproducible multiples with a concentrated zest and variety never before seen. The processes allowed for the production of objects, sometimes hundreds or thousands of them, that were largely indistinguishable from one another: plaquettes, portrait medals, engravings, printed book and type design; cartapesta and terracotta Madonna and Child sculptures, the re-emergence of small bronzes, or, slightly later, etchings, or glazed terracottas that could be assembled in any number of arrangements (not to mention earlier traditions in woodcut prints and coins). Many of the reproducible media types had proliferated for a decade or more before Gutenberg's successful machine was introduced around 1450. It would seem that some of these media, or more precisely the multiples milieu in which they emerged and thrived, facilitated the printing press's ultimate success. What do these objects reveal about the contemporaneous dynamic between art and the ‘market’ for art, between patron and artist, between the audience and the ‘aura’ of the original?

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