the victory of the romanesque over the gothic

p99 the persistence of popular texts into the 17th and 18th centuries and the popularity and revival of them when more people could read in the 19th. persistence of generational memory.

The work of the engravers seems careless and hurried, and they tend more and more to turn out poor copies of earlier illustrations… This was a change in technique which represented a new intellectual climate

impact of rise in prices

woodcuts: images that helped the public’s efforts at imagination, rather than copper engraving, the fine detail of which allowed illustrations to achieve more.

copper: minutely accurate representation, realistic image, permanent record, diffusion of pictorial fact to analogous to the diffusion of typographical fact. p101

mapmaking and nature pictures - flora and fauna. the antwerp museum is good at this.


Part of a reading sequence: The Coming of the Book · The Introduction of Paper into Europe · The Technical Problems and their Solution