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| Johannes Teyler Cockerel - from Opus Typochromaticum ca. 1688-1700 engraving printed à la poupée, with additional hand-coloring British Museum |
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| Johannes Teyler Ceres - from Opus Typochromaticum ca. 1688-1700 engraving printed à la poupée, with additional hand-coloring British Museum |
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| Johannes Teyler Helmeted horsemen bathing in a stream, after Rubens ca. 1688-1700 engraving printed à la poupée, with additional hand-coloring British Museum |
"À la poupée (literally 'with the doll') describes a method of inking intaglio prints in which two or more inks of different colors are selectively applied to different parts of a single copperplate. The inked plate is then printed in a single pass through the press. The method takes its name from the poupée (doll), the small-ball-shaped wad of fabric that is used to ink the plate."
– from an excellent glossary of early color-printing techniques put together by the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC for the exhibition Colorful Impressions
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| Gérard de Lairesse Title page for Atlas Minor with allegorical figures of the Earth and of Atlas holding the Heavens published by Nicolaes Visscher in Amsterdam 1670 etching, hand-colored British Museum |
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| Crispijn de Passe the Elder after Jan Brueghel the Elder Landscape ca. 1600 engraving, hand-colored British Museum |
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| Anonymous French printmaker Queen Christina of Sweden received at Paris by prelates and courtiers after 1656 engraving British Museum |
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| Anonymous German printmaker Portrait of Anne of Cleves ca. 1552-1632 woodcut, hand-colored British Museum |
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| Anonymous Italian printmaker Portrait of Cardinal Tolomeo Galli with Pope Pius IV in roundel ca. 1591-1600 woodcut with stencil-work British Museum |
"This [above] is an intriguing woodcut image: it is made up of a tabernacle frame, a separate portrait of the Cardinal and, in the oval above, a separate portrait of the Pope who created him. The inscription is printed in letterpress. A stencil has been used to color the capes and caps of both Cardinal and Pope with red. The structure implies the intention to make a series of portraits of Cardinals in precisely this form. It is a method of presentation that would also easily accommodate changes being made to the title of Cardinals when they were translated."
– from The Print in Italy, 1550-1620 by Michael Bury (British Museum, 2001)
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| Giovanni Battista Vanni after Correggio Apostle with four Angels from the Vision of St John on Patmos fresco in the cupola of the Duomo at Parma counterproof of etching, hand-colored 1642 British Museum |
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| Giovanni Battista Vanni after Correggio Two Apostles with three Angels from the Vision of St John on Patmos fresco in the cupola of the Duomo at Parma counterproof of etching, hand-colored 1642 British Museum |
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| Giovanni Battista Vanni after Correggio Two Apostles with four Angels from the Vision of St John on Patmos fresco in the cupola of the Duomo at Parma counterproof of etching, hand-colored 1642 British Museum |
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| Giovanni Battista Vanni after Correggio Apostle with three Angels from the Vision of St John on Patmos fresco in the cupola of the Duomo at Parma counterproof of etching, hand-colored 1642 British Museum |
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| Giovanni Battista Vanni after Correggio Apostle with four Angels from the Vision of St John on Patmos fresco in the cupola of the Duomo at Parma counterproof of etching, hand-colored 1642 British Museum |
"Of these foreshortenings the moderns have given us some examples which are to the point and difficult enough, as for instance in a vault the figures which look upwards, are foreshortened and retire. We call these foreshortenings 'al di sotto in sù' (in the 'up from below' style) and they have such force that they pierce the vaults. These cannot be executed without study from the life, or from models at suitable heights, else the attitudes and movements of such things cannot be caught. And certainly the difficulty of this kind of work calls forth the highest grace as well as great beauty, and results in something stupendous in art. You find, in the Lives of our Artists, that they have given very great salience to works of this kind, and laboured to complete them perfectly, whence they have obtained great praise. The foreshortenings from beneath upwards (di sotto in sù) are so named, because the object represented is elevated and looked at by the eye raised upwards, and is not on the level line of the horizon: wherefore because one must raise the head in the wish to see them, and perceives first the soles of the feet and the other lower parts we find the said name justly chosen. (Correggio is responsible for many of the forced effects of drawing in the decorative painting of vaults and ceilings in later times . . .)
– from Vasari on Technique, translated by Louisa S. Maclehose, edited by Gerard Baldwin Brown (London: J.M. Dent, 1907)
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| Giuseppe Maria Mitelli Tarot cards, Bologna 17th century etchings, hand-colored British Museum |
"Carefully coloured pack of the well known cards designed and etched by Mitelli for the Bentivoglio family. The subjects are all fancifully and artistically treated."
– curator's notes from the British Museum