Sibyll. Chiaroscuro woodcut by Bartolomeo Coriolano, [between 1630 and 1655]. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.18727

Pembroke Album

Overview

The Pembroke Album at the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (P&P) is a collection of 91 images, primarily chiaroscuro woodcuts by Italian printmakers active in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The term chiaroscuro comes from the Italian words for light and dark. Chiaroscuro refers to a form of early color woodcut made by printing woodblocks in layers, often involving a linear "key" block and one or more color tone blocks. Prints by, or attributed to, such artists as Domenico Beccafumi, Ugo da Carpi, Antonio da Trento, Niccolò Vicentino, Andrea Andreani, Alessandro Ghandini, Girolamo Bolsi, and Bartolomeo Coriolano are represented in the album.

English collectors Philip and Thomas Herbert, the 5th and 8th Earls of Pembroke, acquired these 90 prints and 1 drawing and later placed them in a sixteen-volume compendium, which was assembled between around 1683 and 1733 and is also known as the Wilton Collection. In 1918, the Library of Congress purchased a single Pembroke Album from the Maggs Brothers.

Pembroke Album cover and spine

The Library conservators removed the prints from the album in the 1980s and matted the prints individually to aid their preservation. The album binding and pages, with descriptions of where each print appeared, is retained in the P&P Supplemental Archive.

Access

Digital images created in 2008 provide ready reference viewing copies in the online catalog. A catalog record accompanies each image. The descriptive information in the catalog records is based on the checklist compiled by Alan Fern and Karen Beall in the 1970s. Research on the prints continues, and the records are updated as new information becomes available.

• View all of the prints (not in sequence as they appeared in the album)
• To view each print and its description in the sequence that it appeared in the Pembroke Album, see the checklist below. In some cases multiple prints were mounted on a single page.

Obtaining Reproductions

Users can download images themselves or can purchase copies through the Library of Congress Duplication Services.

Rights Information and Credit Line

There are no known restrictions on the publication of images from this Pembroke Album.

Credit line: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Pembroke Album, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-DIG-ppmsca-18727]

Related Resources

University of Kansas, Spencer Museum of Art, Print Room

Chiaroscuro woodcut example: http://www.spencerart.ku.edu/collection/print/maps/zanmap.shtml

Bibliography

Fern, Alan M., and Karen F. Beall. "The ‘Pembroke’ Album of Chiaroscuros." In Graphic Sampler, compiled by Renata V. Shaw, 10-28. Washington: Library of Congress, 1979. (Call number: Z663.39 .G7 P&P)

The Graphic Sampler entries, on which the online catalog records for the Pembroke Album prints and drawing are based, include cross-references to Bartsch numbers where relevant.

Griffiths, Antony. "Print Collecting in Rome, Paris, and London in the Early Eighteenth Century." Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin (Spring, 1994): 37-59. (Call number: N1 .H37)

Further information about the Wilton Collection of prints and drawings, including the Library of Congress Pembroke Album, can be found in Antony Griffiths’ article. 

Karpinski, Caroline, ed. Italian Chiaroscuro Woodcuts. Vol. 48 of The Illustrated Bartsch, by Adam von Bartsch. New York: Abaris Books, 1983.  (Call number: NE90.I45 1978 P&P)

Landau, David, and Peter Parshall. The Renaissance Print, 1470-1550. New Haven:Yale University Press, 1994. (Call number: NE441.5.R44 L35 1994) 

This book includes a discussion of chiaroscuro prints and printmakers with specific mention of Library of Congress Pembroke Album number 49, Domenico Beccafumi’s Three Male Figures or Three Lying Nudes.

Palmer, Samuel. General History of Printing. London: Printed by the author, 1732.  (Call number: Z124 .P17 Rare Book, Pre-1801 Coll)

The appendix describes prints and drawings in the Pembroke collection.

Top of Page

Checklist of Prints in Album Sequence

Note: Artist and title information is from the Alan Fern/Karen Beall checklist: