Engraving is a printing technique that consists of reproducing an image, drawn up with sharp instruments or castings or by means of chemical emulsions on a support “matrix”, in such a way that, inking it later, the original drawing is transferred by means of pressure to another surface. In Greek we find the word graphein (to engrave) applied to primitive techniques as xilographia (incisions on wood) or the lithography (charts on stone, without concept of multiple reproduction), but the use of the term “to engrave” applied to a trade is of German etymology and it comes from 'graben', that means “to dig”. It was translated into Spanish from the French term 'graver'. The use of diverse supports for the matrix gives name to the types and classification of the engraving. The matrix that receives the original drawing usually is of metal, generally of copper although also materials like wood, stone or natural or acrylic rubber are used. The drawing is realized by means of lines in the surface of the plate, with sharp tools called gouges or burins, according to the material of the matrix. The engraving term is applied to the technique and to the result the same. If it is a loose leaf receives the name of picture, whereas when it forms part of a bibliographical work accompanying a text we talked about it as an illustration. It can as well be an original work, when it is a design of the artist who composes the drawing on the plate, or it can be a reproduction when it is limited to reproduce or to copy works of other artists. Although the difficulty that entails the quality in the reproduction causes that the engraver or his workshop be considered artists, and even create school with its trade union tradition or technical innovation.
Techniques of engraving
Wood engraving - Xylography
A wood surface is used like matrix. It can be obtained from the tree by means of a cut done either along the trunk following the direction of the fibbers or across the trunk; therefore there are classifications of a “woodcut with the grain” or a “woodcut against the grain”. The drawing is realized carving the wood matrix with a gouge, reducing the surface and obtaining hollows that in the illustration will correspond to the colour absence or blank. Finished the design the matrix is inked with a roller, distributing the ink by the entire surface, except in the hollows. The image will be printed on the paper by means of a press or Roman press.
Chalcography or Engraving on metal
Chalcography is derived from the Greek term 'chalcos' (cupper or bronze), but this technique is also known with other names:
By means of burin
The drawing is realized on the metal matrix by means of a burin, tool with a handle in whose end is a metallic piece with an elongated cylindrical shape which has two sharp V bevelled faces. The burin remembers a plough and the person who records uses it in a similar way making furrows on the plate. To greater pressure, the incision is deeper, reason why greater amount of ink will lodge on it. The ink must be thick and its penetration in the furrows must be levelled down, cleaning the leftover to support the wet printing leaf, with a fabric of wool or felt of the same dimension (mantilla) supported on it, so that it passes between the rollers of the rolling press and under the strong pressure it leaves the ink, concentrated in the incisions, on the support of paper or another material.
Drypoint
The image on the matrix is realized with a fine and sharpened punch or burin, the “drypoint”, that is like a pencil and is used more or less scratching the plate with force, according to the intensity of line that is desired to obtain. When the metal plate is scratched, this one is opened raising one millimetric rough edge to both sides of the incision, where the ink will pause. This technique is very delicate and the plate has to be treated carefully while inking and cleaning, due to the fragility of the rough edge. Because of this reason, there are not many editions of illustrations of the originals.
Etching
During the process the first plate is covered with a varnish composed of bitumen of Judea and beeswax, that is left to dry. Later, a spatula, awl, or other utensil is used to scrape off the varnish along the desired designed lines leaving the metal of the plate exposed. The plate is put into a solution of water and nitric acid such that, where the varnish has been removed, the acid will dissolve or cut the plate more or less deeply according to the time it is allowed to remain in the liquid. The later reproduction is realized just as in the previous techniques.
Variations of the etching:
Soft varnish
It consists of using a varnish that maintains a sticky texture and that it is covered with a very fine paper on which is drawn tightening with a graphite pencil. The silk paper remains stuck to the varnish in the zones where it has been drawn, then the paper is withdrawn and with this one the varnish of the zones where it has been drawn and that it is stuck and leaving the plate without protection. The plate is dip into the acid like in the etching. The result has effects of the pencil texture.
Aquatinta
A technique (often) used in combination with others to obtain flat tones and diverse textures such as dots, pencil-like marks, maniera nera (etched dots so small and numerous they appear black), mezzotint, or smoke-like effects.. All the process is like the one of the etching. The plate is protected dusting its surface with very fine dust of resin of colofonia. The plate is warmed up until the dust is crystallized and it adheres to the surface of the matrix and it is introduced in the acid solution that scrapes around the resin grains. According to the thickness of the dust layer or the acid concentrations and exposure times to them, the amount of ink will be diverse, obtaining thus different effects on the engraving.
Chinese ink with sugar
It is a variation of aquatinta and it constitutes an artifice to be able to draw on the plate using flat tones and to solve the difficulty to have to draw on the plate already prepared for the aquatinta. The matrix is covered with metal with resin of colofonia and the drawing is made with a Chinese ink solution with sugar, drawing with a brush. It is left to dry and the plate is covered with varnish and when everything is dry it is dip into water. The ink and the sugar are diluted in this solution being the plate exposed to the air and the resin in the zones that we had drawn. The plate is dip in the acid, that will act in the zones where the Chinese ink with sugar had been applied and that now remain unprotected.
Mezzotint - halftone
The technique comes from Italy: “Mezzo-tinta” or “engraving in the nera way”. The plate prepares with a tool called verse and they remove blanks on the black using the burnisher. It is necessary to obtain a dark uniform tone on the plate, and it is clarified until obtaining the blank, areas without ink, with a process of burnishing of the surface. If the black is obtained, using successively the technique of aquatinta on the plate, until the wished black tone, is called “False Black Way”.
Lithography
From the Greek term “litos”, stone. It is a technique re-invented in 1796 by a Bavarian writer, Aloys Senefelder. Since the use of the stone (or clay) as element of support and receiver of impression is very primitive. In this technique the matrix is a limestone stone, of fine grain, that is not carved but, by the property of certain type of limestone to react chemically before the presence of greases, the drawing is realized with a greasy pencil, that receives the name of “lithographic pencil”, on the stony surface and once finished the stone is processed with a solution of acid and gum arabic, obtaining the drawing to be fixed and stable. Later on the work continues as usually in the impression craft.
Silkscreen printing
The silkscreen printing is an impression technique on any material, that consists of transferring ink through a gauze that is tightened in a frame (previously it was from silk and there the name) to a support; the passage of the ink is blocked by means of an emulsion of wax or varnish in the areas where the zone is not desired that there is image, and the area where the ink will pass stays wax free, applying it with a rubber roller and moderate pressure.
Photogravure
The photogravure (rotogravure) is a technique in which the images are printed into the paper from a surface with depressions that contain ink, unlike the impressions that are realized from a flat surface whose inked lines are in relief. It is one of the impression systems more used at the moment. It is commercially used for the impression of flexible packing like bags and packages, and for the edition of books and magazines of great print run. Similar to a bas-relief form.
History of the engraving
The first manifestations of engraving as an independent technique originally came from China, due to the invention of the paper that took place towards year 105, using the stone as surface of the drawing, previous to any form of xylographic engraving. The engraving itself arrived at Europe already almost in the fifteenth century, at the same time as the manufacturing techniques of paper, by means of the trips to East of the Venetian and Genoese merchants. Since then the engraving, it is used and studied as independent means of expression, through different techniques, from the primitive ones to sophisticated present computer sciences; it is practised and considered as one of the Fine Arts. Medieval Europe knew the first engravings carved in wooden tablets, which were applied to the fabric stamping, like the famous “Protat wood” found out in 1990. They date from the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, happening at the same time that the generalized use of the paper in several zones of Germany, France and Italy. Units of the first engravings with gothic, religious subjects, scarcely some profane one, they are very difficult to find because of their fragility. They were denominated “wood engravings” and the composition was schematic, without shades nor perspective. The first profane illustrations realized were playing cards, which were sold cheap and in great amount. Most of the life concentrated around the Church that used illustrations with didactic aims and a small text in the reverse side, distributing them among the faithful. The best ones were known as wooden tablets impressions or xylographic incunabula. With the manufacture of good quality and cheaper paper, the stamping improved and so many books with illustrations were published that the engraving was almost reduced to an illustration technique. The first illustrated book is the edelstein, (precious stone), of 1461, printed in Bamberg by Pfister. The invention of the calcographic engraving on metallic plates is attributed to Maso Finiguerra, silversmith of Florence, who experienced with metal plates and inks, . The “Coronation of the Virgin” of 1452 and “San Bernardino” of 1453 are conserved.
In the Renaissance Alberto Durero, artist of the north of Europe, became the first graphical teacher and his works are very numerous and of variable and experimental techniques. In Holland, the engraver Lucas van Leyden (on whom Durero exerted great influence) worked in the classic style of his Italian contemporaries, representing Dutch landscapes and interior scenes with skilful hand and the great sensitivity. The great geniuses of Italy in the Renaissance make arise factories from recorders, appropriate to the type of text where the engraving went built-in, like illustration, or wood or copper engravings, like the series the Planets in the Botticelli workshop; or the one by Pollaiuolo, goldsmith and very technically capable painter, and emphasizing the one by Mantenga, original painter whose influence lasted all along the sixteenth century. At that time the importance of the engraving in France and Spain was smaller, making illustrations (Arfes, and those of Fr. Fco. Doménech) and playing cards of the house of the currency, in Spain; and the copper engravings by J. Duvet, or the wood engravings by Tory and the school of Lyon, in France. Therefore, at about the middle of the sixteenth century the engravings had reached great popularity and they were used for all the forms of illustration, including the cartographic and topographic studies and the pictures. The Cranach (Old and Young), Pilgrim, the Hopfer and all the group called “small teachers” of the Netherlands are famous and the great Italian schools of Venice, Milan, Florence, Parma… etc, as well as the workshop of Ticiano with their innovations to solve the xylographical tests. For the engravers, baroque artists of the seventeenth century this is the period of the culmination of the chalcography: the burin and the etching. An image could be more expressive than the simple reality; the subjectivity of the author hit emotionally and it was a fast and multiple medium to present his works. They attached a lot of importance to the gestures, even exaggerating them to the point of being grotesque. The schools of Germany and Italy lost their superiority and on the contrary they became more popular those of the Netherlands. The workshop of the Flemish Petrus Paulus Rubens, in Antwerp, was of enormous activity, producing engravings inspired by the drawings of the teacher. The best disciple of Rubens, Anthony Van Dyck, with his etchings, settled down himself in England in 1632 and worked as a painter of the court for Charles I. But without a doubt it is necessary to emphasize the painter Rembrandt as engraving teacher, after the death of Rubens and Van Dick, who in collaboration with Lievens takes the art of the engraving to his apogee. In France, Jacques Callot, native of the province of Lorraine, the etching was executed as if it were an artistic technique of illustration; the Spanish and French kings ordered several times to him that he documented the historical events. In Italy they stand out Guido Reni in Bologna and the School of Caravaggio, with the Guercino. While in Spain, where it had shown preference for the manifestation of the engraving as book illustration, two schools are distinguished: the formed by foreign engravers settled down in the country like retinue of the emperor; and the Spanish engravers like Villafranca, Herrera, Obregón… etc. or works of famous painters like Ribalta, Murillo, Valdés Leal, C. Coello and mainly Ribera.
An item of interest is the collection of artistic anatomy plates by C. Martinez, published in Valencia in 1680, or the Painting Course by J. García Hidalgo. During the last two centuries, the wood engraving, - the art to engrave in wood - had gone through a period of technical ignorance, due to the improvements of the engraving over metal; but in the eighteenth century, thanks to the technical advances, it reappeared with force. The works of Fragonard and Wateau, pastoral painters, were repeated by all the schools. The illustrations by Gustavo Doré, French painter and engraver, represent one of the greatest magnificence times of wood engraving. It is in this period when the colour in the engraving is introduced. In Italy the engravings by G.B. Piranesi, Venetian, and his son Francesco, with the famous Veduttas, (views of the city of Rome) and the almost surrealistic Prisons reached much fame. Architect and engraver, he knew to conjugate his knowledge in both matters and thus to realize some of the most beautiful views of the Roman architecture, he engraved several thousands of great size illustrations with spectacular architectonic details. Also they stood out Tiépolo and Canaletto, who with their engravings were able to evoke the Venice of that time. Germany showed preference for the illustration of great literary works: Quixote, Werther, Orlando, the Divine Comedy or pseudo-catalogs of artworks , like the famous Le Peintre Graveur by von Bratsch. England had not had an own school of engraving in the previous centuries; nevertheless, under the creativity of the painter Reynolds, a new technique of engraving began, “some-like”, that reached fast diffusion; as far as the concepts, the satirical and burlesque tone of the Hogarth created an English School more of local customs and manners and more critical, that marked the English national style, and where artists like Lawrence, Baron, or Bewick belong among others. The impression of engravings in Spain, after the decay brought about by the change of dynasty, would undergo a great impulse with the creation of the Real Chalcography in 1789 under the tutelage and protection of the Real Imprenta. Its function would be to centralize all the orders of engraving that were realized in the different secretariats. The illustrations collection that formed from its creation until the beginning of the nineteenth century is most extensive and it includes such outstanding series as the Portraits of Illustrious Spaniards, from which we have a sample in the Foundation, the Views of the seaports of Spain, the Views of the Real Monastery of El Escorial and scientific work collections, like the one of Cavanilles, which we will analyze ahead.
Thanks to this initiative it was considered the importance and the necessity that the Spanish engraving was gotten up to the level reached about the European countries in previous centuries, and thus it appears in one of the catalogues of the Royal Chalcography: “thus, silently, the engraving in Spain was being grouped together, country that neglected the conservation of so many testimonies of its past, as if it wanted to erase it”. We must be thankful for these collections to first rate engravers like Manuel Salvador Carmona, Tomás López Enguídanos, José Vázquez, Luís Fernández Noseret and so many others that left their mark in this institution. The main schools were those of Madrid and Valencia. In Madrid he led as headmaster and teacher in the Academy of Fine Arts, J.B. Palomino, reformist of the traditional techniques, along with the French experts arrived with the Bourbons. One of his disciples was M.S. Carmona, considered the best engraver of his time and who introduced in Spain the well-taken care French style. The nineteenth century stands out for the technical invention and the wide thematic in the engravings; interesting testimony of the society of its time by the diversity of subjects that gather. It is Francisco de Goya who agglutinates all the importance of the art of the engraving like own and singular creation during this century. He used aquatinta together with the etching (even the technique “smoke-like”) to emphasize the dramatic quality of his compositions, being clear in the series the Caprichos, the Disparates or Proverbs, together with other religious and costume illustrations. During the war of Independence against the French occupation of Spain (1808-1814), Goya created his second series of engravings, the disasters of the war (1810), with frightful scenes of the suffering of the people. Another one of the most famous series is La Tauromaquia, depicting scenes from bullfighting, and, later on, the lithographies on the same subject published in Bordeaux, as reclaimed technical newness. The lithography was a cheaper means to reproduce designs in great number as laminae or illustrations, in newspapers or bibliographical illustrations, alternating with the wood engraving; in France it introduces CH. Thompson, disciple of Bewick, reflecting in the printed illustrations the first social critics. The French Honoré Daumier, gifted for the social and political satire, he was the voice of the rising bourgeoisie that denounced the corrupt government of France. The newspapers le Charivari, spread his mordacious drawings of public personages, (government, lawyers, aristocracy) since Goya had already initiated in his real pictures. All the techniques were experienced and mixed in a display to achieve new effects. But it is the etching that was employed by the outstanding painters of the time: Ingres, Delacroix, Corot, Renoir, Odile Redon… spreading their works in different periodic publications like gazette des beaux arts, le Magasin Pittoresque, or le Monde Illustré. In the collection Giménez Lorente there are several volumes of the publication the Iberian illustration and the Spanish and American illustration (1857-1921), whose greatest beauty is the xilographic and calcographic laminae that illustrate the texts. The lithography not only served like artistic means. The first establishment (1819) exclusively dedicated to improve this technique purifying its results was founded by the Direction of Hydrography, whose director, J.M. Cardano, was specialized in the reproduction of maps; and in 1822 the workshop of maps was created and it depended on the Deposit of the War. In 1826 the king Fernando VII founded the Royal Litographic Establishment directed by Madrazo, publishing with noticeable romantic character the landscaping beauties of Spain, his towns and works of art, with original drawings of national and foreign artists. But the most complete ones are memories and beauties of Spain by the Parcerisa lithographer, the work artistic and monumental Spain on drawings by Perez Villamil, and the Spanish Iconography by Carderera. The Valencian artist engraver Esteve y Vilella emphasized in the calcographic engraving or with the burin and with this same technique, years later, Fortuny, in his famous works of Arab reminiscence. From middle to the end of the nineteenth century the Eastern art, especially the Japanese art, exerted great influence on the European artists. One relates that Felix Braquemond, Parisian artist, received porcelain of Japan wrapped around with illustrations by Hokusai. His impressionist friends were pleasingly surprised by their composition and the gentleness of the colour. Edgar Degas, in his lithographies of women bathing, works with this Japanese style. The most original one was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, which inspired by the richness of colour of the illustrations as well as by their fluid images, reflected in the Posters the quintessence of the picking up of the enchantment and the elegance in any atmosphere. It thus began to have new and powerful importance an advertising medium, the poster. It is essential to mention in this context the figure of the Czech artist Alphonse Hucha that became one of the maximum exponents of the movement Art Noveau, with his posters of sensual line and great decorativeness. Also it is necessary to emphasize the simplistic movements of the English humorous tendency, with its lines that seem like using a brush and its flat tones that can be considered the predecessors of “comic”. In the twentieth century, the world and internal wars divided the artistic creation in periods very differentiated conceptual and technically. The fauvism, the cubism and the expressionism that evolved towards the surrealism, neorealism, abstract expressionism, Op Art and Pop Art, among others numerous styles and artistic schools, have formed the history of the art of this century. Individual and original creation predominated over mere reproduction. As a result, the works are unique, and the speed of this development and evolution is astonishing. From 1950 the engraving became one of main means of expression for the avant-garde artists. Many of the most famous artists of this time, from Picasso, Chagall or Rouault, worked in the publishing of famous literary works realizing original illustrations of great newness: classic masterpieces, books of trips, explorations, anatomical of Natural History cataloguings. For a long time, the high quality facsimile reproduction has allowed the general public to reach the painted miniature jewels or the most exquisite maps of all time. The industrial serigraphic stamping includes all the fields and the most sophisticated computer means of reproduction, updating the ancestral art of the impression.
Series of the Royal Chalcography
Series of the Illustrious Spaniards
They are several the engravings that are conserved in the collections of the Foundation which belong to this historical institution. The most important project undertaken by the Chalcography was the publication of the series of portraits of the Illustrious Spaniards, projected by the secretariat of state in 1788, under the direction of Floridablanca and continued by Aranda and Godoy. Nevertheless, he was the illustrious engraver Manuel Salvador Carmona, director of engraving of the Real Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, the one in charge to look for the prestigious group of artists who would carry out such work. A total of 114 pictures were engraved until the year 1814, to which they are added five more that were made between 1882 and 1889 in an attempt to continue the collection. The objective of this collection was to put record of the existence, in Spanish history, of magnificent men of letters, thinkers, philosophers, humanists, legislators, etc. who had contributed with their writings and studies to the European culture: as it was specifically indicated, the work presented abroad “the great men who in all time have preceded” and also contributed “to give promotion to the engravers by the portraits that were ordered to them, perfecting more and more every day this noble art”. With this the importance of the craft of the engraving in Spain was clear, and eventually it equalled itself to the rest of European countries. The collection was periodically published forming notebooks that included six pictures, each of them accompanied by a leaf with the biography of the personage. Authors of paintings were the draughtsmen Asensio Juliá, Antonio Guerrero, Jose Maea and the engravers Rafael Esteve, Tomás Lopez Enguídanos, Luis Fernandez Noseret, Jose Vázquez and Vicente Mariani. They were especially outstanding Tomás L. Enguídanos and Vicente Mariani, since both held the position of engraver of chamber in 1804 and 1807 respectively.
Collection of the botany by Cavanilles (1791 - 1801)
Thanks to the collaboration between the Royal Press and the Chalcography, very interested in spreading the main scientific studies, a series of collections arises in which it is shown a special care in the reproduction of the images due to their didactic character. So it will be the case of the great work Icones and descriptiones plantarum, quae aut sponte in Hispania crescunt, aut in hortis hospitantur, by the botanist Jose Cavanilles. Antonio Jose Cavanilles y Palop, botanist and Spanish naturalist, was born in Valencia on January 16th 1745 and died in Madrid on May the 5th 1804, being one of the most important intellectual figures of his time. He studied in the University of Valencia, where he obtained the titles of teacher in Philosophy (1762) and of doctor in Theology (1766) and became ordained priest in Oviedo in 1772. He dedicated himself to education, he moved to Paris in 1777 as teacher of the children of the Duke of the Infantado, where he would make contact with the botany under the trusteeship of André Thouin and Antoine Laurent de Jussieu. There he will be immersed in the world of the encyclopaedism and the illustration, becoming one of the most outstanding figures of this intellectual current of thought. He was, in addition, the main precursor of the modern theories on the correct advantage out of the natural resources. His fascination by the world of the botany took him to become one of those eighteenth-century travellers who crossed whole countries with eagerness to successfully obtain data in order to make scientific publications. It is the time when the writings and illustrations of scientific, artistic or simply narrative travels proliferate; between all those testimonies the writings of Cavanilles stand out by their great scientific and technical rigour. By order of Charles IV he began to travel around Spain studying and classifying the native flora and, during such investigations, he discovered new species and he made a treatise in six volumes: Icones et descriptiones plantarum quae aut sponte in Hispaniae crescunt, aut in hortis hospitantur (1791-1804); Like good Valencian, he began in the spring of 1791 to work in his native land. The campaign lasted until September of 1793. They were twenty months of an ample, exhaustive and, sometimes, arduous work. Cavanilles did not study solely the vegetal species, but also geography, the water problems, epidemics, met the villagers, took drawings and annotations, etc.
It was such his eagerness to do research that he himself explains this necessity: “I thought that my trips could be more useful if to the botanical observations I added now the mineral kingdom, geography and agriculture observations; since we hardly had any thing about the position and nature of mounts, geography was very inexact in general, and it was unknown the true population and production of the provinces, and also the improvements that in all of them could receive agriculture, inexhaustible source of abundance and happiness. For that reason at the same time that I tried to carry out my commission, I went always joining the useful observations and news for natural, geographic and political and economical history of Spain”. (Cavanilles, 1795). So many were the data successfully obtained by the botanist that when he returned to his office in Madrid, he saw the necessity to publish more than one book. It is thus how the second volume of Icones et descriptiones was published, in 1793, the observations on Natural, geographic History, agriculture, Population and Fruits of the kingdom of Valencia (1795 - 1797), and the observations on the culture of the rice in the kingdom of Valencia and its influences on the public health (1796). These publications were accompanied by illustrations that he drew himself and which he gave to engrave to artists like F.M Sellier, Tomás and Vicente Lopez Enguídanos, Miguel Gamborino and Carlos Vargas Machuca. In 1801 he was appointed director of the Real Botanical Garden of Madrid, position that would exert until his death, after achieving international relevance to this institution thanks to his contacts with scientists of the entire world. In addition, Cavanilles reorganized it systematizing the herbarium, the collections of living plants, seed plots and library, and he enriched it bequeathing, upon his death, an important collection of original drawings, manuscripts and library. A special section deserves the engravings that Tomás López Enguídanos realized following the drawings and annotations done by Cavanilles during his trips to the Kingdom of Valencia. They are a series of engravings of views of the city of Valencia and nearby villages, always with a noticeable interest for being accurate to the reality of the surroundings around them. He does not save effort in the details of topographic situation, as we can see in the following illustrations of Villa de Morella, of Montroy, Real and Monserrat. Tomás López Enguídanos was an illustrious Valencian engraver who was educated in the Academy of San Carlos in Valencia and in the Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, obtaining several prizes in 1781 and 1784. Beyond all doubt his most important posts were the one of Engraver of the Chamber of the Real Chalcography and the one of Academic of San Carlos, both received in 1804. The work of this engraver is very prolific, standing out the portraits that he made of Manuel Godoy and Fernando VII. He also collaborated in many important publications like the views of the harbours of Spain, or four books of architecture of Andrea Palladio. His brothers, Jose and Vicente, also were painters and engravers. Tomás passed away in Madrid in 1812 (approx), becoming a great figure of the art of engraving.
Giovanni Battista Piranesi
In the collections of the Foundation a small sample of a great work is conserved. I talk about the two etchings, realized from original plates, pertaining to one of the most outstanding engravers of the history of the art, Giovanni Battista Piranesi; architect, archaeologist, theoretician, designer of interiors and one of the greatest models of the European engraving of all time. Son of a builder, he was born in Mogliano di Mestre, near Venice, in 1720 and passed away in Rome in 1778. In his youth he frequented the intellectual circles of Venice, where theoretical questions related to the architecture and the classic canons were treated , and there he began to be interested in archaeology, the architecture and, generally, in the history of the art. In 1740 he moved to Rome, when he was twenty years old, following the retinue of the new Venetian ambassador before the Pope. He was educated as engraver in the workshop of Giusepe Vasi, a famous veduttist. His fascination by the “eternal city” is evident from his arrival, where it will know first hand the great classic works of the Renaissance that had fascinated so much to previous generations and to his own one. But Piranesi did not pause there, but he investigated directly the sources of the Roman antiquity, those impressive ruins that keep the true sense of the classic beauty. And is this admiration by the lost rest of a huge past what will make him essential in the genesis of the neoclassicism. Piranesi specialized in the Vedutta, realizing more than 2000 engravings of buildings, statues and ornaments. The representation of the urban aspect of the daily life is understood by vedutta, what the inhabitants of a city see frequently but perhaps they do not admire as they had to. Piranesi caught in his engravings all the magnitude of monuments and ruins of a city that won him over for always. It is himself who affirmed in a poetic declaration, three years from his arrival to Rome, which he considered the foundation of his artistic life: “On the huge Roman ruins… not being expected that an architect of our time can execute some of them… I do not see what is left to do, by me or by any other contemporary architect, more than to display with drawings my own ideas… With this aim I have tried, during my stay in this great metropolis, to unite the acquired knowledge of architecture, any that have been, with the art of not only drawing my inventions, but leaving recorded them in copper…”.
In the engravings trustworthy and exact images of the existing ruins were included, like imaginary reproductions of old buildings in which the alteration of the scale and the juxtaposition of elements contributed to heighten the character of magnitude of the same. The first work of Piranesi, Prima Parte di architettura e prospettiva dates from 1743, a recreation of supposed ambient of the Roman antiquity. Also it is necessary to emphasize one of the most famous collections of engravings of Piranesi, Carceri d' Invenzione (1745), where he transformed Roman ruins into enormous and fantastic jails dominated by boundless and dark passages, which gives idea of that air of theatricality typical of the romantic vision of the artist. These engravings exerted an enormous influence in the romanticism of the nineteenth century, also playing an outstanding role in the development, already in the twentieth century, of the surrealism. The collection of Vedutte di Rome, 135 stamps, was extended nearly 30 years, until the death of Piranesi. It is about an exceptional testimony of the monuments that are, by themselves, solid pillars of the iconography of the city of Rome. It astonishes the repercussion and spreading that their stamps had considering that the first ones were of small format for guides of tourists. With the spreading of the views of Rome, Piranesi saw strengthen his fame transforming the conventional vedutta into suggestive images of great expressive power. In these engravings that know how to use the most expressive means than the art of etching can have, Piranesi speaks to us of the imperial Rome in a poetic way. They are not only magnificent testimonies of archaeology: they are an evocation of a past that recovers all their greatness with an expressive force that nobody, until this moment, had known to transmit. In a letter to his sister, dated on 27th of March 1778, shortly before dying, Piranesi makes a balance of his life and pays a particular tribute to the City of Rome, “in which I have found inspiration and the fortune and of which I consider myself son”.
José Ribelles y Helip
We deal now with a series of engravings that follow the tradition of stamps of suits begun by Juan de la Cruz Cano in 1777. It is in 1825 when the Royal Chalcography publishes this new Collection of Suits of Spain, drawn by Jose Ribelles Helip and engraved by Juan Carrafa. Jose Ribelles is one of the most interesting personalities of the Valencian painting of the first third of nineteenth century. Son of Jose Ribelles, painter tied to the neoclassic aesthetic, and of Josefa Maria Helip, he was born in Valencia on the 20th May 1778. After learning with his father the foundations of the painting, he registered himself as student in the Academy of San Carlos in Valencia, where he would win the first class prize in the 1798 contest. He moved to Madrid to continue his studies in the Academy of San Fernando, obtaining the second prize of first class in the annual contest of the 1799 with the canvas La Continencia de Escipión (the Continence of Scipio). It is since then when Ribelles begins to be known in the artistic circles of the Court, and there he gets to be related to Goya, with whom it seems that there was a good friendship. On 19th November 1818 he was appointed academic of San Fernando and shortly after, in February of 1819, he was granted the title of painter of Camera thanks, partly, to the support of his old teacher Vicente Lopez. His pictorial trajectory was very varied, dedicating himself as much so to the painting of pictures as to the academic landscapes or the design of numerous theatre stage scenes. In 1825 the new Collection of Suits of Spain came out, and it included one hundred and twelve stamps that were published in notebooks of eight stamps each and that represented the suits of the different provinces of Spain. The four that are conserved in the foundation belong to Valencian characters of different offices. In the last year of his life, Ribelles displayed to the exhibition of the Academy of San Fernando the pictures: Don Quixote in the act of being armed knight and The tossing in a blanket of Sancho. He died in Madrid on 16th March 1835, at the age of 57.
The engraving in our time: Ernesto Furió
Between the engraving collections that the Foundation owns is necessary to emphasize the one of Valencia, els seus gravadors i la gran aventura d' Ernesto Furió, whose text was written up by Manuel Sanchis Guarner. It is about a series of engravings, the majority etchings that represent different monuments and emblematic places from the city of Valencia. Valencia. Church of the Saints Johns. Ernesto Furió was born in 1902 in the Cabanyal of Valencia. In 1916 he began his studies in the School of Fine Arts of San Carlos, where he would finish being professor in 1934, and when finishing the studies he moved to Madrid to perfect his studies of chalcographic engraving in the School of Fine Arts of San Fernando. However, his interest to receive a good formation did not finish there and in 1930 he moved to Paris, where he would study in depth works of the most important engravers.
When he returned from the French capital he settled in his native Valencia, where he began an intense and prolific work of the sort of engraving using a burin and gentle cutting. Thus, in 1934 the first Painting prize in the Regional Exhibition of Valencia was granted to him. Four years later he was assigned to the Joint of Seizure of the National Artistic Treasure that had been created to put works of Art out of danger. In 1942 he obtained the chair of Chalcographic Engraving of the School of Fine Arts of San Carlos. Since then innumerable prizes and recognitions to his artistic work are granted to him, being the most outstanding the First Medal, in 1952, of the section of engraving of the National Exhibition of Fine Arts by the Cathedral of Burgos and in 1954 the Gold medal of the Spanish Association of Engraving Artists, which would mean to him to be pensioned by the Spanish Government to extend studies in different Italian cities on the engraving of fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1978 he is appointed “Colossus of Valencia”, and in 1986 the appointment of Academic of Honour of the Real Academy of San Carlos of Valencia arrived to him. Also the monographic exhibitions that are dedicated to him are innumerable, emphasizing the one of the Ateneo Marítimo (cultural association) of Valencia in 1990, which reunited more than a hundred engravings and watercolours of different times. In 1993 the City Council of Valencia dedicated a garden to him with his name in the marine towns of Valencia in recognition to the great work that this Valencian artist had realized generally and, in a particular way, for spreading the beauties of his earth. This series of engravings has the most personal style at the time of representing the views of monuments, creating a very marked atmosphere of lights and shades that are thrown in the facades and give them a certain air of theatricality. This is especially clear in the two representations of the Torres de Serranos and Quart, in which the light contrast among them and the sky is very strong. Also, we see that Furió dispenses all that is secondary and that can harm the clear view of the monument. His lines are very fluid, such that he achieves that air of near reality, of a vivid monument. In many of these illustrations the point of view that the artist has chosen calls one’s attention. In those is visible a clear intention to evoke amazement at the grandeur of proportions and the beauty of the monument.
Other collections of the Foundation
Facsimile Engravings of Francisco de Goya
The admiration of Don Luis Giménez Lorente for the work of Goya is remarkable, since in the Foundation several facsimile editions of his main works of engraving are conserved, as well as numerous books dedicated to the life and work of this timeless artist. The works that the Foundation owns are: the the Disparates or Proverbs, in a reproduction of 22 laminae of the edition that was published in 1864 by the Real Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando; the Caprichos, in two volumes of popular facsimile edition directed by Antonio de Horna and with permission of the National Library of Spain in Madrid; and, finally, La Tauromaquia (the Bullfighting), that contains the reproduction of thirty-three laminae of the first edition of year 1816, of J. Perez del Hoyo. The copper plates engraved with etchings by Francisco de Goya are masterpieces in the universal history of engraving, and constitute the main guideline of the development of the modern illustration. Their graphical series Caprichos, Desastres de la Guerra, La Tauromaquia and Disparates, are the point of inflection between the classic traditional engraving and the one of more original and creative modern conception. Their illustrations are, besides a show as far as the dominion of the technique of the engraving loaded of innovations, one of the clearest products of the thought of Goya, that lets see in them his conception of the figure of the artist, who must express himself with total freedom and giving free rein to his imagination. His activity as engraver began about year 1771, when he realized the etching La huida a Egipto (the flight to Egypt) . In 1778 he did some engravings copying paintings of Velazquez: Los borrachos (the drunkards), Isabel de Borbón (Elisabeth Bourbon), El Primo (the Cousin), etc. These were training illustrations that also allowed him to obtain some income, since they were sold in the Gazeta de Madrid. In 1799, the Diario de Madrid (a newspaper) announced the sale of the series Los Caprichos with the following text that is thought to be written up by his friend Leandro Fernandez de Moratín: “Collection of illustrations of capricious subjects invented and etched engraved by Don Francisco de Goya.
Persuaded the author that the censorship of the errors and human vices (although it seems peculiar of eloquence and poetry) can also be object of the painting: he has chosen as subjects provided for his work, among the multitude of extravagances and errors that are common in all civil society, and among the vulgar preoccupations and lies, authorized by the custom, the ignorance or the interest, those that have believed more apt to provide matter for the ridiculous situation, and at the same time to exert the fantasy of the creator”. Goya had to begin to realize the following series of engravings, called Los desastres de la Guerra (the disasters of the war), in 1810. It is clear the thematic that reflects this series centred in the outbreak of the war of Independence in 1808. It is known that Goya was that same year in Saragossa next to the general Palafox, and who immortalized in images the confrontations of the zaragozanos with the French there. The illustrations, of which one first publication was realized from 1863, constitute a crude reflection on the horror, the cruelty and the death. Once again Goya starts from a reality, but it is his most personal form to show it what makes unique. The evolution of the technique of the engraving in Goya is constant and permanent until reaching the perfect combination of all the techniques and equipment: etching, aquatinta, watercolour, drypoint, chisel, burnisher, scraper… that is gotten up to the artistic practice with the aim of obtaining true pictorial qualities.
The 28th October 1816 the sale of a new collection of illustrations by Goya was announced in the Diario de Madrid, and it was dedicated, this time, to the world of the bulls: La Tauromaquia (The Bullfighting). It is made up of thirty-three engravings about the history of the bulls in Spain, as well as different anecdotes from some of the most famous bullfighters. It's a subject very used in diverse illustrations of the time and with it Goya get closer again to the popular subjects. It is perhaps the collection of illustrations where the capacity of Goya can be best appreciated to enjoy in the ability, skill and dominion of the technique of the engraving. Finally, the series of Los Disparates or Proverbios appears in 1864 published by the Royal Academy. The engravings are etchings and aquatinta and they are perhaps those of most difficult interpretation. The first publication received the name of Los Proverbios and this made think that each illustration represented a saying or proverb, but the certain thing is that they are known as simple silly things without a common argument. The illustrations pigeon-hole shelter according to Disparates Femeninos (feminine silly things), Disparates del Miedo (Silly things of fear), Disparates del Ridículo (Ridiculous situations), etc… Finally, the invention of the lithography and its introduction as technical novelty in Spain take place when Goya is already an old man. But once again the painter demonstrates his interest in the technique, his capacity of learning and dominion, and his understanding on the possibilities and potentiality of this new art to express his creative will. The first lithographies of Goya prolong the activity that the painter developed as draughtsman and in this way he left in his lithographic illustrations testimony of his modernity.
Views of the city of Valencia
We have in this section a selection of engravings realized by French artists of beginning and around the middle of nineteenth century during his trips through Spain. It is necessary to mention here one of the main travellers of that time, Alexandre de Laborde. French of Spanish origin, he was politician, man of letters and a traveller with scientific curiosity, animated by the encyclopaedic spirit of the nineteenth century. Between 1798 and 1806 he crossed Spain with a team of twenty artists to carry out a global inventory of the country that would give as result the publication of his Voyage pinttoresque et historique de l´Espagne. The work consists of four volumes that are illustrated with 349 great quality engravings, and among them they stand out those by Jacques Moulinieu, and F.J. Dequevauviller, L. Legrand and Olympe as engravers. Of these last ones several facsimile etchings that are conserved in the Collection are shown up ahead. One is panoramic views of the city of Valencia, from different ways that surrounded it, as well as one of its most famous avenues, the Alameda. The attention to detail whereupon they were realized is amazing since they give great architectonic and city-planning information of the most singular buildings of the city, in spite of the distance in which it is placed to the spectator. The work of Laborde had a great influence in the fixation of the topics of the romantic travellers who, during the nineteenth century, visited Spain. The perception of the landscape is one of the aspects that were determined by the new romantic sensitivity. The landscape began to be seen with other eyes: it stopped to be perceived as a mere support of the agrarian activity to be considered also like something equipped with value and beauty. The new perception of the nature affected the artist and romantic writer and thus it was shaped in the views of the landscapes.
Original engravings of small format
Since we have been seeing, the collection is very heterogeneous as far as engravings, laminae, illustrations and other graphical work. In this context it is necessary to emphasize some edition of illustrations like the one that was realized in 1978, in Barcelona, on the occasion of the 28th Book Fair, and that reproduces the most famous engravings of Mariano Fortuny. Also the edition of thousand units of the Valencia by Gustavo Doré, - Valencia, 1979 - the ten illustrations by A.J. Cavanilles that the Real Botanical Garden of Valencia published in 1983, or the six engravings by Durero, published by the Friends of the Engraving. As peculiar data, it is necessary to say that several old postal collections of Valencia are also conserved. The series of twelve postal in photogravure in five albums, published by J.A.P., or the fifteen views of Valencia and their towns, of 1900, published by Jose Huguet. Finally we emphasized for its value as original and its thematic singularity, which we have called engravings of small format, since no one of them exceeds the fifteen centimetres, several of them realized on the occasion of the celebration of the Silver Wedding of Queen Elisabeth II of England.
