Cornucopia

Saturday 4th March 2017

A one-day interdisciplinary conference

Key-note Speakers: Dr Marika Keblusek (Leiden University) and Dr Angela McShane (RCA/V&A)

Call for papers

For Italy, the ‘long seventeenth century’ was a period of considerable financial challenges. This was especially evident on the book market. Nevertheless, thanks to new techniques and formats which mutually related text and images within the same publication, innovative genres were born that were marketed towards both ends of the audience spectrum, from the learned to the illiterate.

‘More than meets the page: Printing Text and Images in Italy, 1570s-1700s’ aims to investigate the ways in which the consolidation of the book and print trade influenced the development of such new book genres from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century. The products emerging in the wake of these processes reached consumers throughout distant countries, between Italy and the rest of Europe. Moreover, various professionals and skilled workers earned their living thanks to the print market, from the production to the distribution of printed items. For instance, workshops of woodcutters specialized exclusively in book illustrations, such as for scientific treatises, and publishers regularly sent participants to fairs throughout Europe. The new commercial items, moreover, contributed to the spread of cultural phenomena, for instance the Grand Tour through its souvenir prints that were sometimes incorporated in atlases.

This one-day interdisciplinary conference seeks to examine these matters by focusing on the products, audiences and professionals involved. By doing so, it sets out to lay the foundations for a shared history of printed products and markets in the early modern period. The conference promotes a multidisciplinary perspective, bridging the gaps between art history, history of the book and other disciplines such as intellectual history and communication studies.