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Print Rooms
These institutions keep plates engraved by old
masters and edit them for commercial use without
the original quality. The paper used for prints
edited by these centres usually boosts a water
or stamp mark . To counter fraud, print rooms
such as The Louvre’s have started engraving
their anagram discretely in corners of their
plates so that these modern re-editions may be
recognized easily and dissipate any doubts as to
origin.
The CALCOGRAFÍA NACIONAL of Madrid, founded by
King Carlos III, started its activities on 29
April 1789 as a section of the Royal Print. Its
immediate success is shown in the fact that in
the year 1797 alone as many as 750,650 prints
were pulled with its 8 printing presses. Despite
ups and downs, it is still very active. Its main
collection is formed by Goya’s as well as
Fortuny’s printing plates. It regularly
organizes exhibitions of old and modern prints,
publishes work by modern engravers, and sells
prints struck from the museum’s collection of
plates to visitors.
The CALCOGRAFÍA NAZIONALE of Rome has about
20,000 plates in custody and was founded by Pope
Clemens XII in 1738 with the name Calcografía
Camerale, taking as its starting point the
copper plates of the De Rossi family. In 1871 it
was incorporated into the Italian kingdom. It
keeps work by such artists as Raimondi, Salvator
Rosa, Piranesi --of whom a total of 1180 were
acquired in Paris in 1839-- and Giorgio Morandi.
The CHALCOGRAPHIE DU MUSÉE DU LOUVRE was founded
by Colbert in 1660 with the objective of
starting a printer's workshop for King Louis
XIV, so that the name of Print Room was not
given until 1787. The main part of its
collection was formed by the Cabinet du Roí
(Royal Cabinet) and the Académie Royale de
Peinture (Royal Academy of Painting)
collections, which were initially placed in the
custody of the Print Room pertaining to the
Bibliothéque Nationale (National Library) but
would later form part of the Louvre Museum. And
here they remain, offering a wide range of art
work to visitors. As well as selling large
decorative pieces and work by such old masters
as Van Dyck and Callot, the museum offers prints
by contemporary artists such as Matisse, Arp,
Manet, Degas, Dufy and Villon for sale. In fact,
these re-editions suffer from a problem common
to all print rooms, which is that print quality
and number have not always been strictly
controlled.
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