page_title: Stradanus
section_title: Prints
hierarchical_section_title: Stradanus / Work / Prints
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: ==Summary== anonymous: The invention of book printing &#160;&#160;&#160;Artist anonymous&#160;Designer Stradanus &#160;(1523&#8211;1605)&#160;&#160;Alternative names Jan van der Straet, Giovanni della Strada, Johannes della Strada, Giovanni Stradano, Johannes Stradano, Giovanni Stradanus, Johannes Stradanus, Jan van Straeten, Jan van StratenDescriptionFlemish painter and draughtsmanDate of birth/death 1523&#160; 2 November 1605&#160;Location of birth/death Bruges FlorenceWork location Antwerp (1545), Florence (circa 1550-1605), Rome (circa 1550-1553), Montemurlo (1590)Authority control : Q143595 VIAF:&#8201;29699451 ISNI:&#8201;0000 0000 8108 906X ULAN:&#8201;500011304 LCCN:&#8201;n84804240 NLA:&#8201;35875335 WorldCat creator QS:P170,Q143595 &#160;Title De uitvinding van de boekdrukkunstPublisher Jan Galle&#160;Object type engraving&#160;Description Gravure (http://vocab.getty.edu/aat/300041340 ), anoniem, Museum Plantin-MoretusMedium gravureCollection Museum Plantin-Moretus &#160;&#160;Native nameMuseum Plantin-MoretusLocationAntwerpCoordinates51°&#160;13′&#160;05.86″&#160;N, 4°&#160;23′&#160;53.39″&#160;E &#160;Established1877&#160;Web pagehttp://www.museumplantinmoretus.be/Authority control : Q595802 VIAF:&#8201;130668175 ISNI:&#8201;0000 0001 2285 9666 LCCN:&#8201;n50051109 UNESCO:&#8201;1185 GND:&#8201;1007736-4 WorldCat institution QS:P195,Q595802Accession number PK OPB 0186 005References described at URL: http://dams.antwerpen.be/asset/K2VsEYZICBaf8RnWeWzRQCmA&#160;Source/Photographer Museum Plantin-Moretus &#160;&#160;Native nameMuseum Plantin-MoretusLocationAntwerpCoordinates51°&#160;13′&#160;05.86″&#160;N, 4°&#160;23′&#160;53.39″&#160;E &#160;Established1877&#160;Web pagehttp://www.museumplantinmoretus.be/Authority control : Q595802 VIAF:&#8201;130668175 ISNI:&#8201;0000 0001 2285 9666 LCCN:&#8201;n50051109 UNESCO:&#8201;1185 GND:&#8201;1007736-4 WorldCat institution QS:P195,Q595802Permission(Reusing this file) &#160; This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of their rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. Gravure (http://vocab.getty.edu/aat/300041340 ), anoniem, Museum Plantin-Moretus
context_page_description: Stradanus, Johannes Stradanus, Jan van der Straet or Giovanni Stradano was a Flemish artist active mainly in 16th-century Florence, Italy. He was a wide-ranging talent who worked as an easel and fresco painter, designer of tapestries, draughtsman, designer of prints and pottery decorator. His subject range was varied and included history subjects, mythological scenes, allegories, landscapes, genre scenes, portraits, architectural scenes and animals. After training in his native Flanders, he left his home country and ultimately settled down in Florence, Italy. He became a prominent court artist to the Medici during the second half of the 16th century and worked on the many decorative projects of the court. Stradanus also produced large altarpieces for the most important churches in Florence.
  He was a prolific designer of prints which were circulated widely throughout Europe for many centuries. Through his knowledge of Florentine and Italian art and his international contacts with engravers and editors in Antwerp, Stradanus contributed to the development of printmaking.
context_section_description: Stradanus became interested in working for the printers in the 1570s in particular after his visit to Antwerp in 1578. Initially, he provided existing designs he had created for his paintings and tapestries to the publishers to be turned into prints. The Antwerp publisher Hieronymus Cock published in 1570 a series of prints after Stradanus' designs for the tapestries of hunting scenes he made for the Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimo I de' Medici.  From 1576 the design of prints became one of the principal activities of Stradanus. He later worked with Philip Galle as his main publisher, likely as a result of meeting with Galle in Antwerp during his visit in 1578. Stradanus' virtuoso drawings were engraved by some of the leading engravers of the second half of the sixteenth century, among them Hendrick Goltzius, Philip Galle and his sons Theodoor and Cornelis, Hans Collaert and his sons Adriaen and Jan, and members of the Sadeler family and the Wierix brothers.
  The subjects of the prints were wide-ranging and were in the first place geared towards the demand on the international market for prints that was supplied by the Antwerp printers.  After the take-over by Antwerp by the Catholics, the preference was for counter-reformation themes such as the two Passion cycles, series on the life of the Virgin and the life of St. John the Baptist, the Acts of the Apostles, two series of the Resurrection of Christ  and countless loose devotional prints that Stradanus designed. 
  In addition, Stradanus drew inspiration for subjects from the Florentine intellectual and literary climate in which he lived.  Important were his contacts with the exiled Florentine writer and scholar Luigi Alamanni and other members of the Alamanni family who are mentioned in various commissions and dedications to prints. Luigi Alamanni likely inspired Stradanus to illustrate the entire Divina Commedia. Stradanus made a number of drawings for this project which was never completed. Only one of these drawings, depicting Canto 34 of Hell, where Dante and Vergilius look at Lucifer in the center of the earth, was engraved by Philip Galle. Other themes that tie in with similar intellectual interest are the Nova reperta, depicting inventions of the modern era ending with a print showing an active printshop and the Americae retectio, a so-called 'picture atlas', issued in leaflet form to commemorate the first centenary of the discovery of the New World. It has been argued that the two prints in the Nova reperta series on America of which one shows Amerigo Vespucci's first encounter with the New World and the four symbolic prints making up the Americae retectio series were aimed at showing the presumed important role played by Florence in the discovery of America as Vespucci was a Florentine.  The prints and their allegorical symbols were disseminated widely through the next century and informed the contemporary perception of America. He also designed a series depicting the Horses of the Stable of John of Austria and the Illustrious acts of Roman women.
  In yet another genre of print designs, aimed at a wider audience, Stradanus referred back to the subjects which he had elaborated as a court artist to the Medici court in his designs of tapestries and frescoes in the Palazzo Vecchio: a series that recounts the history and production of silk, an extensive series on the military triumphs of the Medici and a series depicting hunts of various animals published under the title Venationes Ferarum, Avium, Piscium. While some of the hunts in the last series are depicted in a relatively realistic manner, such as the dramatic rendering of horsemen with lances trying to kill a lion that fiercely resists, other hunts seem rather unrealistic such as the print showing leopards being caught with the help of mirrors. One of his most famous loose prints was the Allegory of the arts engraved by Cornelis Cort in 1578.
caption: The invention of printing from the Nova reperta, c. 1590
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