Renaissance Impressions: Sixteenth-Century Master Prints from the Kirk Edward Long Collection

In the 1500s, the printed image functioned as a tool for storytelling. In addition to being vehicles for Christian subjects, engravings, etchings and woodcuts introduced many Europeans to the myths and aesthetics of Greco-Roman antiquity. These innovative printmaking technologies ensured the widespread distribution of figural motifs that fueled the development of Mannerism, which became the dominant style of the Late Renaissance. Mannerism privileged theatrical effects, a unique ideal of beauty and a collapsed perspective, characteristics that especially lent themselves to print reproduction.
Renaissance Impressions offers a rich survey of this golden age of printmaking through a selection of works from the Kirk Edward Long Collection, one of the world’s most extensive private collections of 16th-century prints, with pieces by Michelangelo, Raphael and others.