From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Metalcut is a relief printmaking technique, belonging to the category of old master prints. It was almost entirely restricted to the fifteenth century, and mostly in Northern Europe, mainly Germany and France. There was a late flowering around 1500 in France, with a series of lavish Books of Hours. In the sixteenth century the technique continued to be used for elaborate borders and initial letters in books.[1]

There were actually two different techniques for making metalcut prints, with very different results.

The first technique is essentially that of woodcut but using a thin metal plate rather than a wooden block. The areas not to print are cut away, or hammered back with punches. These prints look very much like normal woodcuts of the period, and it can sometimes be hard for experts to tell them apart.[2] In both, the subject matter is almost entirely religious.

The second technique, was introduced in the second half of the century and worked from black to white, meaning that the print showed white lines on a black background, rather than the other way round as in the first technique. Usually the main lines of the figures and landscape were done in engraving. Then using metalwork punches , the rest of the image is composed of repeated use of the same pattern of punch in a particular area. These might be dots, circles, lozenges, stars, letters making text inscriptions, or more complicated shapes for the borders. Usually very little space is left undecorated.[3]

Despite the limitations of the technique, many of the artists who used the second technique were very talented, and the best prints have considerable power.[4] Compared to contemporary engravings and woodcuts , they were usually large, as the technique needed space on the plate. No names are known of the artists; presumably most of them were trained as goldsmiths, as the punch shapes used were typical ones from goldsmithing.

As with the other contemporary print techniques, very few metal cut prints have survived. Prints made by the second technique are sometimes called prints in the dotted manner, or dotted prints.

• old master print
• popular prints

• Richard Field, Fifteenth Century Woodcuts and Metalcuts, National Gallery of Art, Washington,1965
• An Introduction to a History of Woodcut, Arthur M. Hind, in 2 vols, Houghton Mifflin Co. 1935 (in USA), reprinted Dover Publications, 1963 ISBN 0-486-20952-0 - covers metalcut in full also.