Ornamental print highlights  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

From the Bizzarie di varie figure (1624) by Giovanni Battista Braccelli

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Interest in ornamental prints as part of the Old master print aesthetic dates only from the 1870s (when the first museums of applied arts were founded in Europe) and has been on the rise the last few years, thanks to sites such as Il Giornale Nuovo and its heir BibliOdyssey. Its fascination was kindled by the book Quatre siècles de Surréalisme. This post gives some of the highlights in this tradition.

The highlights

Thus, ornamental print highlights include:

Elephant coming out of a chimney[1] by Wendel Dietterlin, Bouquet on back of peddler[2] by Isaac Briot, Habit d’orfèvre[3] from Les costumes grotesques et les métiers by Nicolas de Larmessin II, Leviores et (ut videtur) extemporaneae picturae[4], Mask with dishes around the eyes and pointed serrated crests on the cheeks and forehead[5], Cartouche in auricular style (Johannes Lutma)[6], Fontaine Rocaille[7] by Gabriel Huquier, Mascarade à la Grecque album, Jeune Moine à la Grecque [8][9], Œuvre de Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier frontispiece[10], Auricular Cartouche with Figures within a Strapwork Frame[11], An antique vase with handle formed by a dog by Enea Vico, Neuw Grottessken Buch by Christoph Jamnitzer [12], Balançoire chinoise by Jean-Baptiste Pillement.

Some perennial favourites, which cannot be strictly called ornamental prints, need to be mentioned here: Bizzarie di varie figure by Bracelli, Varie Figuri Gobbi by Callot, Les Songes Drolatiques by Desprez, the grotesques of Arent van Bolten, the Geometria et Perspectiva by Lorenz Stöer, Scenographiae, sive perspectivae by Hans Vredeman de Vries[13] and Perspectiva Corporum Regularium by Wentzel Jamnitzer.

Illustrations: Fantastic Sea Carriage by Cornelis Floris and Poop of the Soleil Royal by Jean Bérain the Elder

Update:

• Florentine Fête (1619) [14] by Jacques Callot.
• Johann Georg Hertel (after Jeremias Wachsmuth), Winter, Rococo Music, Fancy Dress Ball, etching, 1750-60

LSD-Rococo?

The subject of the ornamental print really captured my imagination. A couple of years back I stumbled on the Rococo print Fontaine Rocaille, an engraving by Gabriel Huquier after a design by Justin-Aurèle Meissonier.

How to call this distorted print which appears to be made under the influence. LSD-Rococo?

Arcimboldesque

Another print from Mascarade à la Grecque[15]. This one is called La Bergère (The Shepherdess).

From the current exhibition Ornament - Ausblick auf die Moderne. Ornamentgrafik von Dürer bis Piranesi (02.06.2012 - 06.01.2013) at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg.

I love these Arcimboldesque ornamental prints, a new name should be invented for them; not compositions but compositings or something to that effect. They are a category in Metamorphic Genitalia and Fantastical Sexual Images.

The Jamnitzers

The Jamnitzers were a family of goldsmiths who lived in the 16th century. They worked for very rich people and filled the 'Schatzkammer' of Northern Europe with highly luxurious items, fuelling the general economy.

However, it is their works on paper which interest us here.

First there is the father, Wenzel Jamnitzer (1507/08 - 1585). He is the author of Perspectiva Corporum Regularium (1568), a fabulous work on perspective and geometry. Of special interest in the Perspectiva are a series the architectural fantasies of spheres[16], cones[17] and tori[18].

Second there is the grandson, Christoph Jamnitzer (1563–1618). Where his grandfather favoured mathematical precision and the sounding voice of reason, the grandson, author of Neuw Grottessken Buch (1610), favoured sweeping curvilinearity, abject grotesqueries and feasts of unreason. The most famous print of that series is Grotesque with two hybrid gristly creatures.

Yet, if you see the work of grandfather and grandson side by side, they both seemed to have been plagued by the sleep of reason, the grandfather suffering from nightmares of abandonment and the grandson challenged by nightmares of being overwhelmed by the dark forces of nature.

Fleshy cartouches: a weak, blubbery mass of human or animal tissue

Lutma's fleshy cartouches: a weak, blubbery mass of human or animal tissue

One of the highlights in bad taste are two albums by Johannes Lutma (1584 – 1669), engraved by his son Jacob Lutma.

They are albums of ornamental prints, cartouches in the auricular style, titled Festivitates aurifabris statuariis[19] and Veelderhande Nieuwe Compartemente[20]. ^{Click the links to see the entries at the Rijskmuseum. PS, what a good job the people in Amsterdam have done on that site. Additionally, one can see a new evolution, where each plate is meticulously described in words.}

Why did I say that these plates are in bad taste?

So says my guide Les Maîtres ornemanistes on page 508:

"Ces Cartouches, composés dans le genre auriculaire exagéré, sont affreux de formes; c'est la vraie décadence de l'art.[21]"

These cartouches, executed in an exaggerated auricular style, are hideously shaped; it is the veritable decadence of art. (tr. mine)

Surely, one of the reasons these plates are considered in poor taste, must be their vulvaesque nature, you have to be pretty green behind the ears not to grasp the yonic symbolism.

In equally bad taste is the Cornelis Floris (1514–1575) album Veelderleij Veranderinghe van Grotissen ende Compertimenten.

One word that keeps cropping up in the vocabulary of these Dutch ornamentists is compartment, one source translates it as panel, although it seems more likely that it has something to do with 'compartment (heraldry)'.

As mentioned before, the auricular style is a shape derived from the human ear. In Dutch, the style is called kwab and kwab is the word a weak, blubbery mass of human or animal tissue, such as quivering flesh, or a brain lobe.

Most art historians call this work of Lutma zoomorphic. I'd like to make a case to include in the zoological horror canon.

Illustrations:

• Cartouche met groot compartiment (Festivitates Aurifabris) [22]
• Cartouche met bovenaan en onderaan een masker (Veelderhande Nieuwe Compartemente)[23]

To avoid all misunderstandings, I can see why others think these plates are in bad taste, but I love them. Publishing negative criticism of stuff I like is one my favourite discourse strategies, see also: Whenever I like something which is considered to be in poor taste.