Reproductive Prints

Nineteenth-century reproductive and photomechanical prints of works of art are particularly significant as they mark the beginning of the desire and ability to record artistic heritage for posterity and for a mass audience. Before the advent of photography, prints such as a lithograph of the interior of Mont-Saint-Michel made it possible for a monument in France to be seen by people all over the world.

Prints were also made of paintings and sculpture, such as an engraving after Albrecht Dürer's Self-Portrait at Age Twenty-Six in the Prado, Madrid. The collection is especially strong in prints after works by François Boucher, Pierre Paul Prud'hon, Raphael, Rembrandt van Rijn, Peter Paul Rubens, Titian, J. M. W. Turner, and Anthony van Dyck.

A significant subset of this collection is a group of almost 500 portrait prints donated to the department of image collections in 2005 by Peter and Evelyn Kraus.  Included in the gift are portraits from the Netherlands, Flanders, France, Germany, England, Italy, Switzerland, and Austria, spanning 300 years from the early 17th through the late 19 century.  Although this assemblage represents the Krauses’ diverse collection interests, most of the prints are from the Low Countries.