Popular print

Popular Prints is a term for printed images of generally low artistic quality which were sold cheaply in Europe and later the New World from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, often with some text. They were the first mass-media. After about 1800, the types and quantity of images greatly increased, but other terms are usually used to categorise them.

From about 1400, there began a "visual revolution that inundated Europe with images during the fifteenth century" (Field) as the woodcut technique was applied to paper ,which was now manufactured in Christian Europe, instead of being imported from Islamic Spain. In the 1400s the great majority of these images were religious, if playing cards are excluded. They were sold at churches, fairs and places of pilgrimage. Most were coloured, usually crudely, by hand or later by stencil. One political cartoon relating to events in 1468-70 has survived in several different versions (many from years later).

Although early information as to prices is almost non-existent, it is clear from a number of sources that small woodcuts were affordable by at least the urban working-class, and much of the peasant class as well.

During the middle of the century the quality of the images became typically very low, but there was an improvement towards the end, partly because it was necessary to keep pace with the quality of images in engravings. Engravings were always much more expensive to create, as they needed greater skill to create the plate, which would last for far fewer impressions than a woodcut. They did not come into the popular prints category until the nineteenth century, when different techniques made them much cheaper.

Broadsheets, also known as broadsides, were a common format. They were usually single sheets of paper of various sizes, typically sold by street-vendors. They included all sorts material, including pictures, political comment or satire, news, almanacs, poems and songs. They could be very influential politically, and were often subsidized by political factions for propaganda purposes. See Broadside (music) for their musical use.

Despite being often issued in large numbers, their survival rate was extremely low, and they are now rare, with most having not survived at all. This has been demonstated by analysis of the records of the London Stationers Company's records from 1550 onwards; some blocks were in print for over a century with no copies now surviving.

See also

This subject is also partly covered by Old master prints. Line engraving is also relevant.

References

Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Poular Piety, 1550-1640,Cambridge UP,1991

Richard Field, Fifteenth Century Woodcuts and Metalcuts, National Gallery of Art,1965