The chiaroscuro woodcut was developed in Germany in the early 16th century. By printing from one or more colour blocks in addition to the customary line block, artists found that they could create a dramatic interplay of light and shade - chiaroscuro, the word that came to define the genre. They used its painterly qualities to create both independent works of art and reproductions of drawings and paintings by others.
This handsome publication brings together more than 130 chairoscuro woodcuts from Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, documenting the fascinating history of the technique during its golden age. It is lavishly illustrated with some of the rarest and finest woodcuts from the collections of the painter Georg Baselitz and the Albertina museum of prints and drawings in Vienna, inclkuding masterpieces by such well-known artists as Lucas Cranach the Elder and the undisupted Italian master of the genre Ugo da Carpi.