II. Technical Innovations and Refinements
Artistic development in the Renaissance would have been impossible without the innovative techniques that arose in that era. Northern Europe witnessed not only the refinement of oil painting but also technological innovations in clockmaking and printmaking. The development of coiled springs in the fifteenth century made it possible to miniaturize various mechanical devices, which led to the creation of portable pocket watches. Meanwhile, in printmaking, the movable-type printing press invented in Germany in the mid-fifteenth century led to new trends in woodcut printing. Copperplate engraving was another technique that originated in Germany before spreading throughout Europe, and it was used in the reproduction of paintings and sculptures. Alongside woodcut, it came to be regarded as an independent art form.
Printmaking allowed multiple copies of a work to be made from a single master plate, and artists used prints to distribute their compositions to a wider audience. Prints even influenced other artistic media such as faience and enamel. For example, the sixteenth-century engraver and printmaker Marcantonio Raimondi created prints based on drawings by Raphael, and these images frequently served as models for the decoration of Italian pottery known as maiolica. Maiolica was made by applying a white tin-based glaze to bisque-fired pottery, then painting decorative compositions with pigments before the vessel was fired again. The technique allowed for the production of vivid colors that rivalled those found in paintings.
Similar qualities can be found in enamelwork produced in Limoges in central France. Enameling is a decorative technique in which powdered glass is fused through firing to a surface made of copper or another metal. The works of Pierre Courteys, one of Limoges’s most accomplished enamel painters, often reveal the direct borrowing of imagery from Raimondi’s prints.
In late sixteenth-century France, the potter Bernard Palissy developed a particularly innovative technique known as rustiques figulines. Palissy successfully created vividly lifelike pottery décor by casting from life, using molds taken from actual plants and animals. In this section, we explore works from a workshop that continues the tradition of that unique technique.
The molding technique Palissy used in his pottery was adapted from the lost-wax casting method widely used to create bronze sculptures in ancient Greece and Rome. The technique was used much less frequently in the Middle Ages, but it was revived during the Renaissance. It involved creating a wax model and covering it with plaster or clay. Once that material had hardened, the wax inside would be removed by melting it away, and molten bronze would be poured into the resulting cavity. Renaissance sculptors mastered this technique, at once ancient and newly revived, and used it to produce bronze sculptures of all sizes.
